A supercomputer is a computer that is considered at the time of its introduction to be at the frontline in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. The term “Super Computing” was first used by New York World newspaper in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University. Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data CorporationCray Research. He then took over the supercomputer market with his new designs, holding the top spot in supercomputing for five years (1985–1990). Cray, himself, never used the word “supercomputer”; a little-remembered fact is that he only recognized the word “computer”. In the 1980s a large number of smaller competitors entered the market, in a parallel to the creation of the minicomputer market a decade earlier, but many of these disappeared in the mid-1990s “supercomputer market crash” (CDC), and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company. Supercomputers, just like any other typical computer, have two basic parts. The first one is the CPU which executes the commands it needs to do. The other one is the memory which stores data. The only difference between an ordinary computer and supercomputers is that supercomputers have their CPUs opened at faster speeds than standard computers. This certain length of time determines the exact speed that a CPU can work. By using complex and state-of-the-art materials being connected as circuits,supercomputer designers optimize the functions of the machine. They also try to have smaller length of circuits connected as possible in order for the information from the memory reach the CPU at a lesser time.

Supercomputers have been designed to do complex calculations at faster speeds than other computers. Its designers make use of 2 processes for the enhancement of its performance.The first method is called pipelining.It does complex operations at the same time by grouping numbers which have the same order that it calculates and these are passed to the CPU in an orderly manner. The circuits in the CPU continuously perform the operations while data is being entered into it.

Another method used is called parallelism. It does calculations in a similar than orderly way. This is where it performs various datas at the same time and moves ahead step by step. A usual way to do it is connecting together various CPUs which does calculations together. Each of these CPUs do the commands it needs to carry out on every piece of information.