Mysteries and secrets of the personal computer! For over 15 years now, Personal Computer(PC) has firmly entered our lives. Back in the early 90s of the last century, we could not even imagine what kind of animal it is, what it looks like, and how to use it. But five or six years have passed, and since the mid-nineties this technique has steadily settled down at work, at home, and on vacation.
And now, at the beginning of the 21st century, each of us sooner or later comes to a point where you need to go to the store and purchase a personal computer for your home. However, most users who already know how to work on a computer, as a rule, have a poor idea of how this technique works, what it is and what this or that computer is intended for. Often this ignorance leads to disappointment in the purchased item: after two months of use, someone’s computer starts to “slow down” and “freeze”, then suddenly it turns off or reboots on its own, and the programs, in turn, are not installed at all. ... Let's figure it out why and from what it happens, how to avoid it, and in general: what is a personal computer. Let's start with a little history and interesting facts from the "life" of computers...
The very first computer in human history
Konrad Zuse, a student at the Technical University of Berlin, having received a diploma in architecture in 1935, could not even imagine that his name would remain in world history as the name of the first person who created not only the world's first computer, but also the world's first programming language.
While still a student, Konrad wondered how to simplify the cumbersome calculations of the resistance and stress of materials in the construction of bridges and other complex structures. After graduating from university, the young man, having worked for a little over a year at the Heinkel aircraft manufacturing company, decided to devote himself to computer science, and still make an apparatus that will simplify engineering and technical calculations. And two years later, (1938), the first Calculating machine working on binary code reckoning.
The most interesting thing is that in the same years, in the USA, several departments, institutes and factories worked on the invention of such a device, and Conrad assembled the world's first computer in his parents' apartment, almost alone, investing in its creation the amount that they loaned him from friends. That's how the world's first computer "Z1" appeared. Then came “Z2” and “Z3”. Unfortunately, all these computers worked for the military machine of the Third Reich and were used for calculations in the production and launch of the first German rockets. But the Americans only in 1943 were able to put into operation their first computer “MARK-1”.
And now, more than 70 years after the invention of the first computer, the buyer, standing in the store, hard scratches his head, solving the problem: “What kind of computer to buy”? Of course, in every computer supermarket there are sales assistants who can explain to the buyer which PC and why he should buy it. But still, there remains a rather large percentage that the buyer is "sucked in" not what is needed. The seller is the main thing that ...? Sell an item for the highest possible price. After all, he gets a percentage of each sale.
And the buyer, trusting such a seller, lays out an amount twice as much as he could pay. Why? Personal computers, like any other technology, have their purpose. Of course, this comparison may be rough, but a person who decides to buy a car for trips to a vacation or a summer residence will not buy a truck, he will get passenger car. And easier to maintain, and cheaper. Every PC has its own purpose. Depending on the details of what power and performance are installed inside the PC, their configuration is different: for office work; for games; to work with video; for working with images (photos, illustrations); for programming; there are also computers designed for the military, security services and specialized calculations (astrophysical calculations, weather forecasts, etc.), but these computers are unlikely to be of interest to a simple consumer who obviously does not need the most powerful computer in the world, installed in national laboratory Los Alamos (USA).
It costs a lot - $ 133 million, and the area is too large: more than one square kilometer. The purpose for which a PC is purchased depends on the configuration of internal parts and the software installed on the computer. We will talk about software a little lower, and now we will touch on the main topic of our article!
The most powerful computers in the world
And so, friends, to single out one super computer as part of our review would not be entirely fair! Since today, in the world there are as many as three computers claiming the title of "The most powerful computer in the world." And today we will talk exactly about them. And so .., we meet: Jaguar, Roadrunner, Titan.
Jaguar is primarily Native American, having independently operating computing cells in its structure as part of two sections: XT4 (7832 cells) and XT5 (18688 cells). Each cell of the XT5 partition contains two six-core AMD Opteron 2356 processors, a frequency of 2.3 GHz, 16 GB RAM DDR2, and a SeaStar 2+ router. The performance of such a device is 1.38 Petaflops, and disk space equals 6 petabytes. The XT4 section, in turn, has more modest indicators of its constituent parts. For example, each cell in this section contains only one six-core processor, 2.1 GHz, 8 GB of RAM and a SeaStar 2 router. It is worth noting that Jaguar runs on its own operating system called Cray Linux Environment.
What is a petaflop per second, you ask?! This is a million billion operations over a specified period of time. The brainchild of IBM, the Roadrunner supercomputer, reached a value of 1.376 Petaflops / sec. This computer is built on a cluster architecture. That is, it consists of a huge number of absolutely identical elements connected in parallel, which provides a solution to problems with big amount similar calculations.
Roadrunner operated by operating Linux system that can run on hardware AMD platform 64. She supports one and two processor systems with memory up to 16 Gb. Base element computer architecture is the Tri Blade module. Physically, the module consists of four boards: two LS21 boards contain four dual-core processor; opteron AMD Dual Core and 16Gb of memory, 4 Gb per core; one QS22 board contains two Power X Cell 8i processors and 8Gb of memory, 4 Gb per processor; The expansion board connects the processor boards to each other and provides communication with other modules.
Externally, Roadrunner consists of 278 racks, which contain: 6120 Opteron processors on 3060 LS21 boards with 49 Gb memory; 12,240 Cell processors on 6120 QS22 boards with 49 Gb memory; 204 nodes Input - Output; 26,288 ISR 2012 routers.
The Cray XK 7-Titan supercomputer is an upgrade of the Jaguar computer, and after completion of the work, it showed a unique speed of operations. It reached 17.59 Petaflops/sec. Titan consists of 18,688 knots. Each node contains:
- 16 nuclear AMD processor Opteron 6274/76.
- RAM controller 32 Gb.
- Graphics accelerator NVIDIA Tesla K 20 X containing 2688 cores and 6 Gb of RAM.
The constructive solution that made it possible to achieve such a speed of calculations was unconventional and very successful: to include in parallel 18 688 16 nuclear processors Opteron 6274 and 18688 GPUs NVIDIA speed, which is much more. Application graphics accelerators, provides about 88% of the total computer power. All electronic stuffing is located in 208 cabinets, to which a water cooling system is connected.
- The total number of cores of the main processors is 560,640.
- RAM 710 Tb.
- Titan is controlled by the Linux operating system.
- The clock speed of the computer is 2.2 GHz.
For data storage, the computer has at its disposal a Spider II system with a total capacity of 40 petabytes.
Components of a modern PC
The PC itself consists of a system unit and a monitor. These are the basic components of a PC. The system unit contains: motherboard - all devices responsible for the operation of the PC are mounted on this board. The processor is the brain of the computer. How more powerful processor, the more operations it can perform. RAM - is responsible for the speed of the processor and the exchange of information with it. A video card is a device that transfers images from the computer's memory directly to the monitor. Sound card- Responsible for sound processing and operation speaker system PC.
Fan and radiator (cooler, slang.) - a device responsible for cooling the entire PC HDD system ( HDD) - the device on which all information is stored computer DVD- drive - a device that allows you to write information to disks and view or read information from them. One of the most expensive configurations PC is a gaming configuration. Unless, of course, playing not simple Tetris or chess, but, as the “gamers” themselves say (game (English) - game) in “shooters” or “rpg”, requiring a powerful PC configuration.
But in any case, it is not reasonable to look for the most powerful computer in the world for games. In order to purchase a PC for games, $ 1,500 - 3,000 is enough. In order for the computer to work properly, you need to install software (software), commonly referred to as a “program”. Having bought a computer without software, the consumer, turning it on, will see the following message on the monitor screen: “On your PC software is not installed”. It translates as follows: "Software is not installed on your PC."
Software, like parts, inside a computer, performs various functions and is divided into the following types: System software - operating systems and programs for diagnostics, maintenance and support of normal PC operation. The most famous on this moment operating system - Microsoft Windows. This is a system that includes software to control a PC and create an interface between computer devices and a monitor.
Application software is conditionally divided into universal and specialized. Specialized software is a set of programs that allow you to provide normal work PC. This can include antivirus programs, programs that allow the user to clean the computer from "garbage" ( extra files and registry keys), programs designed to work with the network, programming languages. Universal software is designed for processing text, images, videos, recording information on media, etc.
In any case, before buying a computer, you should find a person (an acquaintance, or a friend of friends) who is well versed in PC configuration and software. And go to the store with him. Even if this acquaintance requires, within reasonable limits, payment for his services, the buyer will still save a certain amount. After all, such a consultant is not interested in receiving interest from the sale. And the seller has his own interest.
The world's most powerful computer is nearly completed by the US Department of Energy spending $325 million to build two computers at the California National Laboratory. The agency will spend another $100 million on a program designed to improve applications that will run on new machines.
Although the specification for the new fastest machines has not yet been finalized, they must run on top speed between 100 and 300 petaflops. Every petaflop is equal to 10 15 floating point operations per second.
A petaflop is equal to 1,000 trillion floating point operations per second, which is important
This is already closer to the goal of creating the first exaflop (10 18 flops) - a supercomputer that is the next major milestone in the field of high performance computing.
The fastest computer on the order of one exaflops
The developers have speculated that if the current rate of improvement in high performance computing continues, the world's first most powerful computer, with performance on the order of one exaflops may appear somewhere around 2022 - 2023 and it will be the fastest and most powerful computer. Some technologies need to work with powerful computers.
The supercomputers will be open to the scientific community and are expected to run up to 300 petaflops. At first, the calculators will process about 200 petaflops for the National Nuclear Security Administration and will be used to test the safety of nuclear weapons. Machines in service are expected in 2017 or 2018. It is obvious that will seek to increase computing power and hosting providers, given that high time uptime and fast loading pages are important for increasing website traffic.
The most powerful computer in the world is now considered
The most powerful computer in the world is the Chinese Tianhe-2. The speed of both US Department of Energy machines is expected to be faster than the fastest computer and the current world record, the Tianhe 2, which tops out at almost 35 petaflops. The supercomputer was designed in China at the National Defense Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou. Although Chinese engineers are working to increase the speed to 100 petaflops on Tianhe-2. 
The design of the most fast computers is expected to continue with the new trend in the reconstruction of top supercomputers. Engineers have previously increased the power of supercomputers by adding additional CPUs(CPU) which serve as the brains of the machine.
It's not so easy to add more processors to get to exaflops. The new machines will add the use of graphics processing units (GPUs), speed up certain calculations, and add new high-speed interconnections between the GPU and CPU. As a result, despite the fact that the machine will have 5-10 times the most high performance, it will consume only 10% more energy. Components for the new one fast car will be manufactured by IBM, NVIDIA and Mellanox.
Thus marked the beginning of powerful calculators.
It is expected that new computing facilities will enable assistance in areas ranging from materials science and the development of biofuel research to engineering calculations nuclear weapons. High performance computing is required to support content management systems and software in general.
Russian powerful computer
A powerful Russian-designed computer "Lomonosov-2" is located in the scientific and computing center of Moscow State University. The power of the domestic computer is about 2.5 petaflops. The number of cores is about 50 thousand. It is used for various computational tasks, both fundamental and applied science.
Calculator "Lomonosov-2"
The use of supercomputers is necessary in the development of new technologies for nuclear-fueled vehicles or those announced and already being produced as a mass-produced hydrogen-cell vehicle.
CES 2016 was visited by Vortex, which presented an interesting model of a gaming computer, MSI Vortex, at a separate booth. Its cooling system, like many design elements, strongly resembles Apple Mac Pro. The most powerful radiators provide continuous air circulation, hot streams are removed from the case. But the main thing is that the computer is very compact, the volume of the structure is about 6.5 liters.
Powerful MSI Vortex Gaming Computer Showcased at CES 2016
CES 2016 was visited by Vortex, which presented an interesting model of a gaming computer at a separate stand - . Its cooling system, like many design elements, strongly resembles Apple Mac Pro. The most powerful radiators provide continuous air circulation, hot streams are removed from the case. But the main thing is that the computer is very compact, the volume of the structure is about 6.5 liters.
The device is controlled by a microprocessor Intel Core i7-6700K. Inside there are two GeForce graphics cards GTX 980 operating in SLI mode. This provides increased productivity and good FPS in graphics intensive games. Given the number of slots for RAM, you can install up to 64 GB of RAM in the case! In order to reduce the chipset, DDR4 SO-DIMM slots were used.
The hardware is cooled through the Silent Storm Cooling system, which consists of several elements. And the Apple Mac Pro computer, recall, has only one working fan. Representatives of Vortex promised that their new product will have low level noise, even maximum load CPU. At CES 2016, performance was demonstrated in 3DMark 11, where MSI Vortex scored 21K points! The result is great, although the tests themselves are several years out of date. Difficult to judge performance modern games, but the picture will be at a good level.
The collaboration between MSI and Vortex has produced an interesting result. Previously, only Apple could boast such powerful iron enclosed in a compact case. Planned separate version PC including Intel chip Core i5 and two graphics cards GeForce GTX 960M with 3D support. This modification is considered "budget", but its cost will be about $2000! The price of the top-end unit is not reported by the manufacturer. The device will go on sale in the near future.
Perhaps your computer is already several years old and it was bought in a store, or maybe it is brand new and you assembled it yourself, and from the most fancy parts? One way or another, it will be interesting for you to look at the most expensive and most powerful computers - and your computer will seem like an old calculator to you.
The most powerful computer in the world:
At the moment, in the Guinness Book of Records, the place of "The most powerful computer" is " Tianhe-2"- translated from Chinese" milky way ". It is capable of performing 34 quadrillion operations per second. What does this mean and what is it for? Such powerful computers are mainly used for space research, climate analysis, and so on. What can we say about the simplest (for these computers) tasks, for example, playing Battelfield 4 on maximum resolutions, but it is worth noting the fact that a super-computer is not provided for such tasks (it does not have a video card), so if you suddenly want to buy such a "monster", you will have to upgrade it a bit. 
Computer performance was 33.86 petaflops according to the Linpack test.
Tianhe-2 built on the basis of Intel processors xeon. The computer consists of 16,000 nodes, each of which contains two Xeon processor IvyBridge and three Xeon Phi. In total, it has 3,120,000 processing cores and 1.4 petabytes of RAM. The supercomputer is running Kylin Linux. Communication between nodes is carried out using a specially designed proprietary TH Express-2 network, the heart of which is thirteen 576-port switches based on ASIC chips made using 90nm technology, each of which has throughput 2.56 terabits per second.
The file storage has a capacity of 12.4 petabytes. Power consumption 17.8 megawatts (24 megawatts including cooling and air conditioning systems). The computer covers an area of 720 m2
most expensive personal computer
The most expensive personal computer released Chinese company Eazo, who named her brainchild Eazo X70". The price of a computer is 45 thousand dollars (1 million 620 thousand rubles). However system characteristics The stated price does not justify:
Processor Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (3.0GHz)
- 4GB RAM,
- Two hard drives 150GB (10,000rpm) + 500GB (7,200rpm)
- Video card: dual NVIDIA 8800GTX,
- Liquid cooling
- 7.1 channel audio
- OS Vista Ultimate
Performance series computers have a 36-month warranty. This warranty includes highly qualified technical and service support. Our managers are always ready to provide consulting support with the installation and configuration of equipment.
If you have a technical problem, we carry out initial diagnostics and solve the problem as much as possible. fast way. If the problem is due to hardware failure and requires replacement of components, the computer must be brought to one of our service centers. Service centers of our company are located in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
IN this package guarantee delivery to service centers is FREE for all cities of Russia. Additionally, there is an opportunity to increase the term and level of service.
Testing
We do comprehensive testing gaming computer using specialized software designed to evaluate stability, performance and temperature conditions.
Special sets of utilities create the maximum possible load for a long time, going through several cycles with subsequent logging and graphic display received data. Most problems with hardware can be "caught" at the stage of preliminary testing.
For Performance Series computers, the standard testing period is 12 hours, with the option to extend to 24 hours.
Assembly and setup
We pay Special attention assembling and configuring computers. Specialists and masters of the company undergo a rigorous selection for professional suitability. This allows you to create systems that meet the high requirements of the company, paying attention to the smallest details.
Our task is to provide our customers with uninterrupted and high-quality equipment with impeccable appearance, which will allow you to fully enjoy the games in the form as intended by the developers.
The assembly includes: working with cable management, a high-quality thermal interface, setting up a cooling system, BIOS firmware motherboard, installation of all up-to-date drivers and configuration of the storage subsystem.
Reliable and free shipping:
Our company provides free shipping throughout Russia. We work only with verified logistics companies, the shipped cargo will be insured for the full value.
Every gaming computer it is supplied with a reliable packaging container with a foam bag, which prevents any damage to the cargo during transportation.
When shipping Performance X series computers between cities, a branded shipping box is included. It will ensure the iron safety of the cargo.
