10 Awesome Reasons To Love Supercomputers

From their sheer scale to the multitude of things they can do, there are many reasons to love supercomputers. Here are just ten of them!

5. They can predict earthquakes and tsunamis

Predicting the next big one. Credit: Shutterstock.

The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake that caused the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant meltdown exceeded all expectations by geologists in terms of the extent of damage and loss of life. As simulations for tsunami flooding require very complex mathematics, they take several days when run on a regular computer—much too long to be useful for real-time analysis and activation of early warning systems.

Using the K supercomputer that was fed with data from the Great East Japan Earthquake, a Japanese research group has dramatically winnowed down the time required for such simulations to just two minutes. It does so with remarkable accuracy when used to model real-life flood scenarios. This means that earthquakes and tsunami flooding can be predicted and evacuation notices sent out way ahead of time, long before the waves hit the shore.

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Jeremy received his PhD from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he studied the role of the tumor microenvironment in cancer progression.

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