<p>Like your car? Love the movies? Happy with your doctor and your bank? You&#39;ve got a supercomputer to thank.</p><p>As Bob Dylan rightly observed, you don&#39;t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. But if you want to do long-term forecasting, predict the path of a Category 5 hurricane, or simulate the damage from decades of climate change, you will need a supercomputer.</p><p>These machines are just what their name implies: thousands of processors operating in parallel, performing quadrillions of operations each second on unimaginable volumes of data.</p><p>Scientists are using these electronic beasts to solve some of humankind&#39;s thorniest problems. Machines like Lawrence Livermore Lab&#39;s&nbsp;Sierra&nbsp;are calculating the blast radius of thermonuclear warheads and creating detailed models of the human heart. Oak Ridge Lab&#39;s&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/summit/">Summit</a>&nbsp;is being used to design better batteries and simulate supernovas. Argonne Lab&#39;s forthcoming&nbsp;<a target="_self" href="https://www.hpe.com/content/hpe/country/us/en/insights/articles/2020/10/here-comes-exascale-and-its-about-to-change-everything.html">exascale</a>&nbsp;system&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.alcf.anl.gov/aurora">Aurora</a>&nbsp;may allow researchers to map the human brain and harness nuclear fusion.</p><p><strong>Please read:</strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/argonne-national-laboratory-rick-stevens-talks-about-the-biggest-baddest-computer-2010.html">Q&amp;A: Argonne National Laboratory&#39;s Rick Stevens talks about &#39;the biggest, baddest&#39; computer in the world</a></p><p>Supercomputers already impact our lives in ways most of us are unaware of. The advancements derived from high-performance computers (HPCs) have trickled down into things many of us do every day&mdash;like checking the weather, driving to the doctor&#39;s office, watching a movie, or managing our bank accounts.</p><p>Here are some of the more common ones.</p><p>Weather: Do I need an umbrella?</p><p>Every waking moment, 2x1044&nbsp;molecules (<a href="https://phys.org/news/2018-08-weather-bit-wrong.html">that&#39;s a 2 followed by 44 zeroes</a>) bump into each other in the earth&#39;s atmosphere, creating what we call weather. Predicting the interactions of even a fraction of these particles requires billions of calculations.</p><p>The&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.vos.noaa.gov/MWL/dec_07/weatherprediction.shtml">first successful 24-hour weather forecast</a>&nbsp;was achieved in April 1950 by the University of Pennsylvania&#39;s Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. Originally built to calculate the trajectory of ballistics during World War II,&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-brief-history-of-the-eniac-computer-3889120/">ENIAC</a>&nbsp;is considered by many to be the first general-purpose computer.</p><p>By the mid-1950s, computer-generated forecasts were common. The National Weather Service now uses&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/">two room-sized supercomputers</a>&nbsp;from IBM and HPE Cray, each roughly 10,000 times more powerful than the machine you&#39;re using to read this. Over the years, the accuracy of weather prediction has steadily improved. Today&#39;s five-day forecast is typically on target 90 percent of the time, while 10-day projections are still&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/01/02/forecast-models-keep-hinting-at-subzero-air-ahead">correct less than half the time</a>. So, if you&#39;re packing for a long trip, bring an umbrella just in case.</p><p>Automobiles: Hitting the road</p><p>For more than 30 years, supercomputers have been helping cars become faster, safer, and more energy efficient.&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://lacar.com/part-five-a-deeper-dive-into-the-cray/">Japanese carmakers</a>&nbsp;began using HPCs in the late 1980s. Mazda employed&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/11/30/Mazda-orders-8-million-Cray-supercomputer/4828659941200/">an $8 million Cray</a>&nbsp;supercomputer to design the sleek &quot;Aero-Wave&quot; roofline of its&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/26/sports/about-cars-the-rx-7-pares-down-for-serious-fun.html">1993 RX-7 sports car</a>. And in 2004, General Motors purchased&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://apnews.com/article/85b143aaa4a11be50d7275c07862fcca">a supercomputer</a>&nbsp;to simulate the results from vehicle crash tests. As we move into the era of&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/23/21300614/mercedes-benz-nvidia-computer-orin-self-driving-adas-ota">autonomous vehicles</a>, HPCs will play an even greater role in training a car&#39;s AI systems to determine whether that&#39;s a trash bag in the middle of the road or a baby carriage.</p><p>When you pull into a gas station to fill up, you can thank supercomputers for that, too. Three-dimensional seismic models are helping petrochemical companies&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-total-supercomputer/oil-group-total-hopes-new-supercomputer-will-help-it-find-oil-faster-and-more-cheaply-idUSKCN1TJ0FQ">predict the locations of oil reserves</a>. And when you finally retire that gas guzzler for an all-electric vehicle, it may be because a supercomputer helped design&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical-physical-sciences/news/2018/nov/meet-michael-supercomputer-designed-accelerate-uk-research-ev-batteries">longer lasting electric vehicle batteries</a>.</p><p>Medicine: The AI doctor will see you now</p><p>Gotten a flu shot this year? Supercomputers played a key role in the development of&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/supercomputers-model-of-human-contact-simulates-swine-flu">vaccines for avian and swine flu</a>&nbsp;and are now hard at work seeking treatments and&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://news.utexas.edu/2020/05/21/how-supercomputers-are-getting-us-closer-to-a-covid-19-vaccine/">cures for COVID-19</a>.</p><p>Medical researchers are using AI and supercomputers to create&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://medicalfuturist.com/digital-twin-and-the-promise-of-personalized-medicine/">digital twins of human organs</a>, to observe how they respond to treatments before applying them to their flesh-and-blood siblings. Today, Hewlett Packard Enterprise&#39;s&nbsp;<a target="_self" href="https://www.hpe.com/content/hpe/country/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2018/07/hpe-helps-epfl-blue-brain-project-unlock-the-secrets-of-the-brain.html">Blue Brain 5</a>&nbsp;is helping to map the 88 billion synapses inside&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/articles/a-cell-atlas-of-the-mouse-brain-a-step-towards-brain-simulation-321724">the neocortex of rodents</a>, a key step toward understanding the human brain.</p><p>Ultimately, high-performance computing is expected to usher in a new era of personalized medicine, where bespoke treatments are tuned to match your specific genetic makeup.</p><p>Financial services: You can bank on it</p><p>Have you ever used your credit card in a foreign country and gotten a phone call from your bank minutes later asking you to verify the purchase? That&#39;s because a&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.hpcwire.com/2019/05/13/cashing-in-on-hpc-and-ai-in-the-financial-services-industry/#_edn2">machine learning algorithm running on an HPC</a>&nbsp;has your back. Identifying potential bank fraud as it happens requires a tremendous amount of computing power. For example, MasterCard processes 165 million transactions per hour, applying nearly 2 million rules to each transaction&mdash;and does it in a matter of seconds.</p><p>Financial services institutions use supercomputers in a variety of other ways as well: to detect and repel cyberattacks, assess credit risk, evaluate investments, verify regulatory compliance, predict pricing, and manage high-speed trades. And the next time you call your bank&#39;s customer service line, it may be answered by&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://uxdesign.cc/how-we-designed-inga-a-delightful-banking-chatbot-for-ing-941d18c4646f">an AI-driven bot</a>&nbsp;that can assess your emotional state and direct you to the right person.</p><p>Entertainment: What do you want to watch tonight?</p><p>It&#39;s hard to find a recent major movie release that doesn&#39;t employ some form of computer-generated imagery. Films constructed entirely around CGI brought in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1020938/cgi-animated-movie-revenue-us/">nearly $6 billion</a>&nbsp;at the box office in 2018. And the more sophisticated the animation, the more computing power required. Baymax, the doughy white protagonist of Disney&#39;s &quot;Big Hero 6&quot; (2014), was rendered using&nbsp;<a target="_self" href="https://www.engadget.com/2014-10-18-disney-big-hero-6.html">a 55,000-core supercomputer</a>&nbsp;that simulated&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.techrepublic.com/article/disney-animation-team-pushes-technical-boundaries-with-big-hero-6/">10 billion rays of light</a>&nbsp;bouncing off each object.</p><p>And then there was &quot;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/cats-movie-cgi-live-action-digital-fur-technology-2019-7">Cats</a>&quot; (2019). The less said about that the better.</p><p>But CGI movies have been around a lot longer than you think. Alfred Hitchcock&#39;s &quot;<a target="_blank" href="https://computeranimationhistory-cgi.jimdofree.com/vertigo/">Vertigo</a>&quot; (1958) used a WWII-era anti-aircraft targeting computer to create the Spirograph-like opening title sequence. The first film where supercomputers played a starring role was 1984&#39;s &quot;<a target="_blank" href="https://computeranimationhistory-cgi.jimdofree.com/last-starfighter-1984/">The Last Starfighter</a>,&quot; which used a Cray X-MP to render 27 minutes of special effects.</p><p>Astronomy: The sky&#39;s the limit</p><p>When we gaze at the night sky, we&#39;re looking into the recent past, using our eyes and maybe a telescope. When astrophysicists do it, they&#39;re&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/japans-new-supercomputer-lets-astronomers-simulate-the-stars">looking back 13 billion years</a>, using supercomputers to simulate what the cosmos looked like shortly after the Big Bang. HPCs have been used to model&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/supercomputer-simulations-reveal-details-of-galaxy-clusters/">how galaxies are born</a>, plumb the depths of&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://scitechdaily.com/new-origin-of-supermassive-black-holes-revealed-by-supercomputer-simulation/">black holes</a>, and shed light on the mysteries of&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161102144436.htm">dark matter</a>.</p><p>This may be supercomputing&#39;s most profound and long-lasting impact: to change our understanding of how the universe was formed, as well as our place within it.</p>