Class Assignment Year 9

Computing Studies: An Introductory Course

Chapter 3

Ingobyte

Your textbook discusses the classification of computers on pages 43–45. At the time it was written, the fastest supercomputer could perform at 143.3 gigaflops.

Now, according to IBM, the world’s fastest supercomputer, the RS/6000 ASCI ‘White’, can perform 12.3 trillion calculations per second. That’s 12.3 teraflops. This computer has 6 trillion bytes of RAM and cost US$110 million. Compare this to the average desktop (personal) computer that can perform up to 1.5 billion instructions per second (1.5 GHz), has 64–128 MB of RAM and costs around A$2000.

You can read more about the RS/6000 supercomputer at:

http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2000/06/28/technology/ibm/

Assignment:

· Work in groups of 3.

· Allocate a different task for each group member

· Document the tasks each person did

· Answer the 4 questions below

· Document your research

· Create a website to present your work (15 marks)

· Give a 5 minute presentation in class (5 marks)

Total: 20 marks

Internet research

1 Visit this website that lists the world’s top 500 supercomputers:

http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/top500.html

Why is a site/listing like this necessary?

2 How are the results found and how are they expressed?

3 How is this type of information useful to various groups of people such as developers, manufacturers, IT students and researchers?

4 Refer to the advertising pages of current computer magazines to ‘build’ your dream komputer. Your budget is $3000. Make sure your choice of CPU, motherboard and RAM are appropriate. Don’t forget to include graphic controller and audio cards if they are not built-in. Justify your choices, including the type of computer and operating system you have chosen.