Abstract: High performance computing (HPC), or supercomputing, is one of the most crucial technologies for the development of the country. This paper describes the important role of HPC and its actual application in various countries of the present world.  Then, it introduces the history of the development of high performance computers and their classification,  the landmark achievements in their development in the recent ten years and the top ten supercomputers of the world in the year from July, 2010 to June, 2011.  Finally, the paper presents the analysis of the main difficulties and the research trends in HPC’s development and looks into the major new challenges in HPC’s further advance in the next ten years.  

Key words: supercomputing, high performance computing, high productivity computing, massively paralle, processing, cluster