Click above to listen to part 1 of Supercomputer Showdown, featuring Katherine Riley, Director of Science, Argonne National Laboratory and Jack Wells (pictured above with Molly), Director of Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory National Center for Computational Sciences, explaining how supercomputer speed is measured in floating point operations per second, or FLOPS. The Summit supercomputer in Tennessee can operate at 200 PetaFLOPS, or two hundred quadrillion floating point operations per second.

Supercomputer Showdown
​Part 1: What is a supercomputer?
Part 2: What is FLOPS?
Part 3: Supercomputers and AI
Part 4: Quantum Supremacy

Podcast also available on PocketCasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and RSS.

2026 Webby Award Nominee
for our three part series on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

Big Picture Science is an immersive radio show and podcast that reveals the unexpected connections in science.

Our Skeptic Check episodes take a critical look at extraordinary science claims and pseudoscience.

Don’t settle for a science snapshot. Get the big picture. 

Hosted By

Molly Bentley Executive Producer and Co-Host, Big Picture Science  

Seth Shostak Producer and Co-Host, Big Picture Science
Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute

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