I recently learned that Britain is spending £36 million to upgrade a supercomputer:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79rjg3yqn3o

Can’t you buy a very powerful gaming computer for only $6000?

CPU: AMD R9 9950X3D

Graphics: Nvidia RTX 5080 16GB

RAM: 64GB DDR5 6000MHZ RGB

https://skytechgaming.com/product/legacy-4-amd-r9-9950x3d-nvidia-rtx-5090-32gb-64gb-ram-3

This is how this CPU is described by hardware reviewers:

AMD has reinforced its dominance in the CPU market with the 9950X3D, it appears that no competitor will soon be able to challenge that position in the near future.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d/29.html

If you want to add some brutal CPU horsepower towards your PC, then this 16-core behemoth will certainly get the job done as it is an excellent processor on all fronts, and it has been a while since have been able to say that in a processor review

https://www.guru3d.com/review/ryzen-9-9950x3d-review-a-new-level-of-zen-for-gaming-pcs/page-29/

This is the best high-end CPU on the market.

Why would you spend millions on a supercomputer? Have you guys ever used a supercomputer? What for?

  • LordMayor@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    Galaxy collisions, protein folding, mechanical design and much more. Big simulations of real world physics and chemistry that require massively parallel computation, problems that require insane numbers of calculations running on multiple machines that can pass data to each other very quickly.

    Every supercomputing center has a website where you can read about the research being done on their machines.

    No, these can’t be done at similar scale on your desktop. Your PC can’t do that many calculations in a reasonable time. Even on supercomputers, they can take weeks.