What does supercomputer look like?
A lot of refrigerator-sized cabinets chock full of processors. We put about a thousand processors in a single cabinet, and then we connect them all up with a fast network. Just think of a lot of cabinets. If you think about some of our machines, it could be a basketball-sized court filled with cabinets. I understand some of the supercomputers are covered with artwork? The front of the cabinets we actually customize for our customers. We have some amazingly cool-looking cabinets. The largest supercomputer we have, our system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, it has a jaguar leaping across the front of the cabinet. Another system at the University of Tennessee — it’s the Kraken. It’s the mythical sea monster, like an octopus on steroids. I have twin eight-year-old boys, and one of them, his favorite picture is the Kraken. He has a poster of it in his room. And the other one likes the jaguar. What distinguishes a “supercomputer” from a high-functioning computer? If you think about a super
