What kind of humongous tasks do supercomputers do? What type of mathematical models can be so complex that it requires a computer close to $1B?

Question

What kind of humongous tasks do supercomputers do? What type of mathematical models can be so complex that it requires a computer close to $1B?

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Answer 1

I would imagine a lot of it is sensitivity analysis (basically saying parameters and rerunning models thousands or millions of times) to test ranges of possibilities. Some of the work my lab does involves these analyses but we use a computing cluster for it. As context, running these kinds of simulations on a single computer can take days, weeks, months, etc. depending on the number of simulations and a cluster can reduce the time significantly.