Supercomputing and supercomputers for science and engineering in general and for chemistry and biosciences in particular

Abstract

We start by pointing out relationships between production of information, global simulation, and supercomputing, thus placing our research activities in today's society context. Then we detail the evolution in hardware and software for lCAP, our experimental supercomputer, which we claim to be especially well suited for supercomputing in science and engineering. A preliminary discussion of 1CAP/3090 (our latest experimental effort) is included. Many examples from different disciplines are provided to verify our assertions. We "prove" our point by presenting an example of global supercomputing. Starting with 3 nuclei and 10 electrons, building up to a single water molecule, then to a few hundred, we learn, for example, about Raman, infrared, and neutron scattering; we then move up to a few hundred thousand molecules to analyze particle flow and obstructions; finally we experiment, but only preliminarily, with a few million particles to learn more on nonequilibrium dynamics as in the Rayleigh-Benard systems. In this way, quantum mechanics is overlapped with statistical mechanics and expanded into microdynamics. The entire paper is finally reanalyzed from a different perspective, presenting rather systematically, even if most briefly, our ideas on "modern" computational chemistry, where quantum mechanics is as much needed as fluid dynamics and graphics. In this section the main computational techniques are analyzed in terms of computer programs and their associated flow diagrams to solve the basic equations using parallel supercomputers.-