HPC: High-performance computing (HPC) uses supercomputers and computer clusters
      to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems 
      approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers.

Exascale computing is a 21st-century attempt to move computing capabilities 
beyond the existing, successful petascale. If achieved, it would represent a 
thousandfold increase over that scale. On the basis of a supercomputing 
conference held in December 2009, Computerworld projected its implementation 
by 2018.


1 megaflop = 10^6  float-point op. per sec.
1 gigaflop = 10^9           ...
1 teraflop = 10^12          ...
1 petaflop = 10^15          ...
1 exaflop  = 10^18          ...

A multi-core processor is composed of two or more independent cores. One can 
describe it as an integrated circuit which has two or more individual 
processors (called cores in this sense). Manufacturers typically integrate the 
cores onto a single integrated circuit die (known as a chip multiprocessor or 
CMP), or onto multiple dies in a single chip package. 

In general, a “multi-core” chip refers to eight or less
homogeneous cores in one microprocessor
package, whereas a “manycore” chip has more
than eight possibly heterogeneous cores in one
microprocessor package. In a manycore system,
all cores share the resources and services,
including memory and disk access, provided by the
operating system. Microsoft and industry partners
anticipate the advent of affordable general-purpose
“manycore” systems in a few years.


Tianhe-1A: 2,5 petaflops (artigo em .../public_html/DISCIPLINAS/ea869-12011/
http://pressroom.nvidia.com/easyir/customrel.do?easyirid=A0D622CE9F579F09&version=live&prid=678988&releasejsp=release_157

The system uses 7,168 NVIDIA® TeslaTM M2050 GPUs and 14,336 CPUs; it would
require more than 50,000 CPUs and twice as much floor space to deliver the 
same performance using CPUs alone.