Leaning with Intent

Supercomputers and FLOPS

These days it is not common for an average person to have a computer. While our computers many years ago might have been considered a marvel of technology, we are getting more and more demanding each year. In our days supercomputers have a completely different system to measure its performance. FLOPS are used as a measurement for performance of supercomputers, and they stand for:
FLoating point
Operations
Per
Second.
This type of measurement is especially popular in scientific circles, as scientific calculations make heavy use of floating point calculations. This type of measurement, like I said, is also often used to measure various supercomputers. Most of them are used for scientific reasons, and they make use of the floating point calculations as it is an efficient way of comparing various computers. This term “floating point” refers to the fact that the decimal point can be placed anywhere relative to the significant digits of the number. If you don’t understand it straight away don’t worry, as you don’t have to remember it, but in my opinion it is important to know that FLOPS are a measurement of supercomputers performance. Who knows, maybe one day such computers will be available for sale in your local computer store.