The biggest supercomputer in history

[LiteCoinGuy]

[Kprawn]

I do not know, if you can compare the super computers with the combined hash rate of the whole Bitcoin network. You have to compare apples with apples, not apples with grapes. We should compare

bigger decentralized networks with Bitcoin, to get a real comparison and I think we outperform them too. Someone should get the stats for combined hash rate of things like Azure or YouTube or

Facebook and put that on the graph, to show people how powerful the Bitcoin network is. 

[defined]

I do not know, if you can compare the super computers with the combined hash rate of the whole Bitcoin network. You have to compare apples with apples, not apples with grapes.

Dedicated bitcoin rigs can only do one thing, while traditional supercomputers can perform all kinds of tasks. It would be nice to see a future version of bitcoin that can perform other tasks than solving hashes and acts as a distributed supercomputer.

[onlinedragon]

How strong would it be if you compare it with the supercomputer Google created.

[Patatas]

How strong would it be if you compare it with the supercomputer Google created.

The Super Computer created by google is way faster than the one mentioned above.Actually, hash rates are not a standards they follow while judging the super computers.If you know about Quantum Computing ,the Qubits separate them from the normal computers where the instructions are the ordered sent of only two bits IE 0 and 1.Qubit is an additional bit introduced in the theory of Super Computers.If you're really interested in the mechanics http://wccftech.com/wave-worlds-quantum-super-computer/

[Blawpaw]

The biggest computer in history was made in 1954. It occupied almost an entire floor in a building.
Today we go around with smartphones that have 1000000 more capacity than the biggest computer in history.

[Patatas]

The biggest computer in history was made in 1954. It occupied almost an entire floor in a building.
Today we go around with smartphones that have 1000000 more capacity than the biggest computer in history.

Don't think you really have an idea what a super computer is.Its not the size,its the processing power.Size of the computers were big as you have mentioned when we had main frame systems and hard disks as big as a refrigerator.Nope smartphones still don't have capacity or processing power as big as super computers or the gaming CPU's.

[Gleb Gamow]

I do not know, if you can compare the super computers with the combined hash rate of the whole Bitcoin network. You have to compare apples with apples, not apples with grapes.

Dedicated bitcoin rigs can only do one thing, while traditional supercomputers can perform all kinds of tasks. It would be nice to see a future version of bitcoin that can perform other tasks than solving hashes and acts as a distributed supercomputer.

Turing complete comes to mind.

[QuestionAuthority]

GIZMODO
The World's Most Powerful Computer Network Is Being Wasted on Bitcoin

According to Bitcoin Watch, the whole Bitcoin network hit a record-breaking high of 1 exaFLOPS this weekend. When you're talking about FLOPS, you're really talking about the number of Floating-point Operations a computer can do Per Second, or more simply, how fast it can tear through math problems. It's a pretty common standard for measuring computer power. An exaFLOPS is 1018, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 math problems per second. The most powerful supercomputer in the world, Sequoia, can manage a mere 16 petaFLOPS, or just 1.6 percent of the power geeks around the world have brought to bear on mining Bitcoin. The world's top 10 supercomputers can muster 5 percent of that total, and even the top 500 can only muster a mere 12.8 percent.

And that 1 exaFLOPS number is probably a little low. Because Bitcoin miners actually do a simpler kind of math (integer operations), you have to do a little (messy) conversion to get to FLOPS. And because the new ASIC miners—machines that are built from scratch to do nothing but mine Bitcoins—can't even do other kinds of operations, they're left out of the total entirely. So what we've got here is a representation of the total power spent on Bitcoin mining that could theoretically be spent on something else, like real problems that exist naturally. So all these computers aren't really accomplishing anything other than solving super difficult and necessarily arbitrary puzzles for cyber money. It's kind of like rounding up the world's greatest minds and making them do Sudokus for nickels.

Projects like Folding@Home and SETI@Home use similarly networked power for the less-pointless practices of parsing information that could lead to more effective medicines or finding extra-terrestrial life, respectively, and either are hard-pressed to scrounge up even half of a percent of the power the Bitcoin network is rocking. And with specialized Bitcoin-mining hardware on the rise, there's going to be an army of totally powerhouse PCs out there that are good for literally nothing but digging up cybercoins

[Gleb Gamow]

GIZMODO
The World's Most Powerful Computer Network Is Being Wasted on Bitcoin

According to Bitcoin Watch, the whole Bitcoin network hit a record-breaking high of 1 exaFLOPS this weekend. When you're talking about FLOPS, you're really talking about the number of Floating-point Operations a computer can do Per Second, or more simply, how fast it can tear through math problems. It's a pretty common standard for measuring computer power. An exaFLOPS is 1018, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 math problems per second. The most powerful supercomputer in the world, Sequoia, can manage a mere 16 petaFLOPS, or just 1.6 percent of the power geeks around the world have brought to bear on mining Bitcoin. The world's top 10 supercomputers can muster 5 percent of that total, and even the top 500 can only muster a mere 12.8 percent.

And that 1 exaFLOPS number is probably a little low. Because Bitcoin miners actually do a simpler kind of math (integer operations), you have to do a little (messy) conversion to get to FLOPS. And because the new ASIC miners—machines that are built from scratch to do nothing but mine Bitcoins—can't even do other kinds of operations, they're left out of the total entirely. So what we've got here is a representation of the total power spent on Bitcoin mining that could theoretically be spent on something else, like real problems that exist naturally. So all these computers aren't really accomplishing anything other than solving super difficult and necessarily arbitrary puzzles for cyber money. It's kind of like rounding up the world's greatest minds and making them do Sudokus for nickels.

Projects like Folding@Home and SETI@Home use similarly networked power for the less-pointless practices of parsing information that could lead to more effective medicines or finding extra-terrestrial life, respectively, and either are hard-pressed to scrounge up even half of a percent of the power the Bitcoin network is rocking. And with specialized Bitcoin-mining hardware on the rise, there's going to be an army of totally powerhouse PCs out there that are good for literally nothing but digging up cybercoins

Imagine what could be accomplished if all the energy used to manufacture and play online games were used to solve the worldwide drinking water problem (citing just one example of thousands of noble causes) [allowing millions of survivors to play online games]. <I think I see an error in my assessment>

[QuestionAuthority]

GIZMODO
The World's Most Powerful Computer Network Is Being Wasted on Bitcoin

According to Bitcoin Watch, the whole Bitcoin network hit a record-breaking high of 1 exaFLOPS this weekend. When you're talking about FLOPS, you're really talking about the number of Floating-point Operations a computer can do Per Second, or more simply, how fast it can tear through math problems. It's a pretty common standard for measuring computer power. An exaFLOPS is 1018, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 math problems per second. The most powerful supercomputer in the world, Sequoia, can manage a mere 16 petaFLOPS, or just 1.6 percent of the power geeks around the world have brought to bear on mining Bitcoin. The world's top 10 supercomputers can muster 5 percent of that total, and even the top 500 can only muster a mere 12.8 percent.

And that 1 exaFLOPS number is probably a little low. Because Bitcoin miners actually do a simpler kind of math (integer operations), you have to do a little (messy) conversion to get to FLOPS. And because the new ASIC miners—machines that are built from scratch to do nothing but mine Bitcoins—can't even do other kinds of operations, they're left out of the total entirely. So what we've got here is a representation of the total power spent on Bitcoin mining that could theoretically be spent on something else, like real problems that exist naturally.So all these computers aren't really accomplishing anything other than solving super difficult and necessarily arbitrary puzzles for cyber money. It's kind of like rounding up the world's greatest minds and making them do Sudokus for nickels.

Projects like Folding@Home and SETI@Home use similarly networked power for the less-pointless practices of parsing information that could lead to more effective medicines or finding extra-terrestrial life, respectively, and either are hard-pressed to scrounge up even half of a percent of the power the Bitcoin network is rocking. And with specialized Bitcoin-mining hardware on the rise, there's going to be an army of totally powerhouse PCs out there that are good for literally nothing but digging up cybercoins[/i][/size]

Imagine what could be accomplished if all the energy used to manufacture and play online games were used to solve the worldwide drinking water problem (citing just one example of thousands of noble causes) [allowing millions of survivors to play online games]. <I think I see an error in my assessment>

You missed the key statement.

[Amph]

I do not know, if you can compare the super computers with the combined hash rate of the whole Bitcoin network. You have to compare apples with apples, not apples with grapes.

Dedicated bitcoin rigs can only do one thing, while traditional supercomputers can perform all kinds of tasks. It would be nice to see a future version of bitcoin that can perform other tasks than solving hashes and acts as a distributed supercomputer.

well gpu rig can do pretty much anything at a lower rate but they can, they cna mine bitcoin directly like asic while can be used for any other application or gaming

so you already have your multitask rig, just don't look at asic

[LiteCoinGuy]

5/13/13

"The world's top 10 supercomputers can muster 5 percent of that total, and even the top 500 can only muster a mere 12.8 percent."

[Kprawn]

Can we really compare the specialized Asic chip's math calculations that are specifically designed to do that, to the power of other super computers that can do much more than solving math related to

Bitcoin? (integer operations)? I am not very knowledgeable on the subject, but I always thought these chips are specifically designed to concentrate on Bitcoin math and are pretty useless to do anything

else. @QuestionAuthority seem to know a lot more on the subject... could you give us a bit more detail, between the difference and how effective these chips would be at doing anything else?

[QuestionAuthority]

Can we really compare the specialized Asic chip's math calculations that are specifically designed to do that, to the power of other super computers that can do much more than solving math related to

Bitcoin? (integer operations)? I am not very knowledgeable on the subject, but I always thought these chips are specifically designed to concentrate on Bitcoin math and are pretty useless to do anything

else. @QuestionAuthority seem to know a lot more on the subject... could you give us a bit more detail, between the difference and how effective these chips would be at doing anything else?

What it boils down to is that ASIC machines have to be excluded from the total because they are not computers any more than printers are computers. What you're left with is the total of actual computers mining which is a much smaller number. We can't know that number from looking at only the total hash rate. We do know that large ASIC farms have taken over Bitcoin mining and the wide spread sale of individual ASICs mean that even large pools are mainly ASICs. That leads me to believe that the Bitcoin network is nowhere near the size of even a small supercomputer. I doubt it's currently even one petaFLOP. There aren't many people still around that are stupid enough to mine with a video card or CPU.