What are supercomputers used for?

Supercomputers are used in military, scientific research and business. Research institutes provide the time of their computers peer-reviewed scientific projects, the list is often publicly available. For example, on computers in the ICM are carried out simulations of astrophysical, biochemical, hydrological, epidemiological and aerodynamics, as well as belonging to the study of number theory and linear algebra. The following graphics show a few sample visualizations of simulations which are performed on supercomputers.

The construction of supercomputers

Modern supercomputers get its performance through a combination of many thousands of processors and zrównoleglaniu of the calculation. For economic reasons, used processors available in mass production because the costs of the design and manufacture of new types of processors are significantly higher than the cost of production supercomputers. To enable efficient use of computing power of these processors, uses a specially designed memory hierarchy and the most efficient available connection to transfer data between them. Because of this architecture, however, supercomputers can achieve high performance only to the calculations, which can be highly parallelizable.

Comparing the performance of supercomputers

The main measure of performance currently used for supercomputers is the number of performed operations during the second floating point (FLOPS). It is often administered with an appropriate SI prefix. For example TeraFLOPS (TFLOPS) is 1012 FLOPS, a petaflops (PFLOPS ") is 1015 FLOPS. It is measured using appropriate test standard. The most common such test is LINPACK, which measures the speed of solving a dense system of linear equations using the Gauss method. Because many of the problems posed supercomputers can be reduced to solving such equations, this test is a convenient abstraction for measuring the effectiveness in solving such problems. Supercomputers obtaining the highest scores in this test since 1993 are published on the TOP500 list, which is updated twice a year. Another measure of the performance of supercomputers is the measure of FLOPS / watt, taking into account the speed of calculations in addition to the current consumption by supercomputers. The most effective measure supercomputers by the TOP500 list is published since 2007 on the Green500 list.

Supercomputers

Supercomputer is a computer far exceeding the capabilities commonly used computers, in particular Featuring many more computing power. This term has emerged in the '60s in relation to computers manufactured by the CDC and later by Cray. They were produced in dozens of copies and cost several million dollars. Currently, most supercomputers are single copies, designed and manufactured to order. The costs of their production back to 200 million U.S. dollars [1]. The fastest supercomputer is currently Tianhe-1A, which is installed in the NSC Tianjin, China. Technological advances in information technology makes the machine counted several years ago to a class of supercomputers today, can hardly compete in terms of productivity with personal computers. For example, the computing power of one of the most powerful supercomputers in the eighties Cray-2 was about 4 GFLOPS, which is comparable to the computational power of one core processor to the low-cost personal computers. Supercomputers are primarily used to carry out complex physical simulations such as weather forecasting, climate research, modeling of chemical reactions, the study of aerodynamics and aircraft study of aging nuclear weapons.

How to recognise a hacked computer

Determination of whether the computer has become a zombie is not easy. Some symptoms may be:
- increased hard disk activity
- excessive use of network link
- some of the typical functions of the system is not available (eg, task manager)
- e-mails from unknown people.

To safeguard against attacks, we must first have a working and current antivirus program, and do not open files from unknown sources (eg, suspicious e-mails).

Botnets - the dangers

Merge even several computers connected to the Internet can be a major weapon in the hands of the cracker. This situation makes the greatest threat botnets modern Internet and puts in a state of readiness all the computer industry.
Dramaturgy gives also the fact that the Web has so far revolve worms that can be removed even by the simple, often free antivirus software, which gives an idea of how many computers are completely unprotected. Sometimes even the same connection "vulnerable equipment" to the Internet to download an antivirus program or personal firewall you may end up an infection.
In most cases, botnets are used to:
- Sending unsolicited mail - spam
- theft of confidential information (eg personal data, credit card numbers)
- DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service)
- sabotage
- Online Scams
- surveillance

DoS attacks, or DDoS become a dangerous weapon in the hands of criminals forcing tributes for withdrawing from the attack (as in the case of companies dependent on a network connection, such as portals and stores a considerable threat.)

Btw. If you're concerned about your online privacy and security, visit stalkinfo.com, to see if you're being cyberstalked.

How botnets work

A single computer in the network is called a zombie computer. The total number of zombie computers in the world is estimated at several million - can not be accurately determined because it is constantly growing. Worms spread by exploiting various bugs in the software or the ignorance of computer users. Currently, besides the most popular e-mail, send out new worms are also using instant messaging clients like MSN Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Konnekt, Jabber, and AIM. Experts point to a tendency to create ever smaller, and at the same time much harder to detect botnets. Already a botnet consisting of approximately 3000-7000 computers can cause serious risks if only computers connected to it have a suitably fast Internet connections.

Botnets - history

November 2, 1988 Morris was running the worm Worm that can automatically infect other systems using the Internet. Infected more than 6 thousand. computers, which accounted for approximately 10% of the then-Fi. Losses were estimated at 10 to 100 million dollars. The suspect pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of judicial observation, 400 hours of community service and a fine of 10 thousand. U.S. dollars. The first real botnet network formed in 1993. These worms were connected to an IRC network and are controlled by sending messages through the network. It is still the most popular, although not the only, way of controlling botnets. In January 2007 the Storm botnet has been identified. Based on data from September 2007 found that has the ability to cut off the internet all over the country and has the potential to perform more calculations per second than the best supercomputers. April 22, 2009 World company Finjan announced that a botnet made ​​up of at least 1.9 million computers seized.

The end of Rustock botnet

Microsoft managed to close another big botnet. A year after defeating the botnet Waledac company from Redmond Rustockowi struck the final blow. Corporation by a judicial lawsuit against the anonymous operator Rustock, complaining that it violates his trademarks. He managed to get the court's consent to the physical seizure of a botnet server. Of course, this was done in collaboration with the relevant authorities. On the basis of a court order seized five servers hosting companies in seven U.S. cities. Also seized control of the IP addresses used by the botnet. "Now we work with ISPs and security specialists and help owners of computers around the world in cleaning their machinery with the botnet code - said Richard Boscovich of Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit. The main lesson of our work is that if we are to succeed in the fight against botnets, we must work together - he added.
Experts estimate that the botnet was connected to a million computers. Rustock could send 30 billion emails per day.

Botnet - a group of computers infected with malicious software (such as a worm), remaining in hiding from the user and allows the designer to exercise remote control over all computers in a botnet. This control allows you to remotely spamming and other attacks using infected computers.

The new iPad

Apple has included a new central body in it's new iPad - dual-core processor, Apple A5, which is to be two times faster than its predecessor (A4), with a 9-fold more efficient graphics and at the same time is to collect as much power as Apple A4. The device has two cameras - front and rear. There was also a place for the gyroscope. All this is enclosed in a housing of the thinner one-third (a mere 8.8 millimeters thick!) than the first generation of IPAD, and even thinner than the iPhone, the fourth case Weight also went down - now is only 601 grams. White color version will be available from the first day of sales. Faster and more efficient the unit does not reduce battery life - iPad 2 will operate for 10 hours without a break, the same as the first iPad.