What is a SuperComputer? 

“One definition of a SuperComputer used to be a computer that changed a compute bound problem to an I/O bound problem. Because the continuing increase in processor performance of roughly 60% per year has compounded much faster than the 20% per year of I/O rates, the problem has reversed so that I/O performance can be the bottleneck in solving complex physics problems. As these trends continue, the I/O bottleneck grows ever worse without some change in the fundamentals of data storage.”

Tyce McLarty, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory