Difference Between Supercomputer And Mainframe Computer

What is a Supercomputer?

A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The term is commonly applied to the fastest high-performance systems available at any given time. Such computers have been used primarily for scientific and engineering work requiring exceedingly high-speed computations.

Performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS). Supercomputers contain tens of thousands of processors and can perform billions and trillions of calculations or computations per second. Some supercomputers can perform up to a hundred quadrillion FLOPS. Since information moves quickly between processors in a supercomputer (compared to distributed computing systems) they are ideal for real-time applications.

Common applications for supercomputers include testing mathematical models for complex physical phenomena or designs, such as climate and weather, evolution of the cosmos, nuclear weapons and reactors, cryptanalysis, oil and gas exploration, aerodynamics and new chemical compounds (especially in pharmaceutical industries).

What you need to know about Supercomputer

• Supercomputers are used to solve very complex and large mathematical and scientific calculations.
• Supercomputers process one single but most complex problem at once.
• Supercomputers were invented by Seymour Cray in 1976.  
• Supercomputers are used for high-end tasks like nuclear weapon simulation, weather simulation etc.
• Performance is measured in Floating Point Operations per Second (FLOPS).
• The modern supercomputers have Linux operating system and derivative variants of Linux operating system.
• Supercomputers are large in size with the biggest layout of all computers.
• Supercomputers can have processing speed in the range of 100 to 900 MIPS. They are the fastest computers of the world.
• A supercomputer is optimized for complicated calculations that take place mostly in memory.

Also Read: Difference Between Analog And Digital Computers

What is a Mainframe Computer?

A mainframe computer, informally called big iron or mainframe, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and large-scale transaction processing.

At their core, mainframes are high-performance computers with large amounts of memory and processors that process billions of simple calculations and transactions in real time. The mainframe is critical to commercial databases, transaction servers, and applications that require high resiliency, security, and agility.

Mainframes have traditionally been known with networks such as the internet instead of distributed computing, that although differentiation is distorting as narrower computers are becoming more strong and mainframes become even more cross-purpose. The main mainframes were installed in metal frames of square footage which is possibly where the inspiration came from. A standard mainframe may have consumed 2000-10,000 square meters in the background. The latest mainframes are almost the same length as big fridges.

What you need to know about Mainframe Computer

• Mainframe computers supports multiprogramming, storage of large databases and can serve a large number of people at a time.
• Mainframes process thousands of queries simultaneously. 
• The first Mainframe computer was invented by IBM company.
• Mainframe computers are used in the sectors like, health, insurance, retail transactions etc.
• Performance is measure in millions of instructions per second (MIPS).  
• Has ability to simultaneously run many different kinds of operating systems (z/OS, Linux, etc).
• Mainframe computers are smaller in size than supercomputers.
• Mainframe computers can have a processing speed in the range of 3-4 MIPS to as high as 100 MIPS.
• Mainframe computer is optimized for calculations that involve large amounts of external data that are accessed from databases.

Also Read: Difference Between Minicomputer And Microcomputer

Supercomputer vs Mainframe Computer In Tabular Form

Also Read: Difference Between First Generation And Second Generation of Computers

Conclusion

The main difference between mainframes and supercomputers is their typical application domain – mainframes excel in reliable volume computing in domains requiring integer operations (e.g, financial, indexing, comparisons, etc). Supercomputers are design to excel in their ability to perform floating point operations – addition, subtraction, and multiplication with enough digits of precision to model continuous phenomena such as weather. Despite the continual change in IT, mainframe computers considered by many to be the most stable, secure, and compatible of all computing platforms.