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?
A huge factor is how much data you can process at a given time. Often, in the end it’s not that complicated per sample of data. But when you need to run on terra bytes of data (let’s say wide angle telescopes or CERN style experiment) you need huge computer to simulate your system accurately (How does the glue layer size impacts the data?) and process the mountain of data coming from it.
Nowaday, practically speaking it’s just a building full of standard computers and software process dispatching the load between the machines (which isn’t trivial especially when you do mass parallel processing with shared memory)