In the mid-1960s Control Data was producing the world's most powerful supercomputers, but strangely enough couldn't sell very many of them.

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It remains one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, but has been replaced by something even faster.

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But if it disappeared for half a century, unfortunately even future supercomputers would not be able to work out where it had been.

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At a theoretical top speed of 10 petaflops, the Stampede system would beat that, but because it won't become operational for several years, newer supercomputers will likely surpass it by then.

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From one of the most aggressive small company incubators to the work being done to make supercomputers as prevalent as PCs once were Nvidia is actively working to change the world but few know of much of this work.

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"Supercomputers weren't designed for things like Web searches, scheduling and database management, but with today's pricing and performance it makes good economic sense, " adds Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee professor and cocompiler of the Top 500 list.

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