The Supercomputer, also referred as the "Supercalculator", is a quantum supercomputer designed to hold Lyoko, X.A.N.A., and countless actual individuals in its data at the same time. It is housed in the Supercomputer Room below the Laboratory.
In Code Lyoko Evolution, the final episode (Ultimate Mission), the supercomputer was shut down again.
Overview
History
The Supercomputer was built by Franz Hopper for the purpose of destroying Carthage. During construction of the supercomputer, Franz Hopper used the Time reversion feature 2,564 times to complete work on the computer. Each time reversion doubles the processing power of the supercomputer, and by extension, X.A.N.A., the Supercomputer is powered by an uranium rod.
The actual Supercomputer is at the lowest level of the Factory where it rises from a hatch with a kind of liquid, most likely liquid nitrogen used for cooling, in the center of the room. The Supercomputer also has a monitoring port a few stories above, but only Jeremie and Aelita can fully understand its potential.
In The Girl of the Dreams, Jeremy shouts Return to the past now! and a Time reversion initiates, even though he has been dragged away from the computer. This may mean that the supercomputer can take voice commands.
In the second season, X.A.N.A. and Aelita were both dependent to the supercomputer's survival. Should it have failed, or ran out of energy, X.A.N.A. would have been destroyed along with Aelita. To that regard, Team Lyoko did not shut down the Supercomputer because of Aelita's dependency to the computer.
In the series finale, the group finally shut down the Supercomputer. Also, in this episode, its hatch is seen with the Eye of X.A.N.A. on it.
Technology
The idea of the supercomputer doubling in power with every Return to the Past is probably erroneous - if the supercomputer added a qubit with every return trip, then after Franz was done its data-processing power would be absurd - most likely it takes multiple RTTPs to generate another qubit and increase the processing power. If the processing power truly did double every time, then the number would exceed ten googolplex.
The subject of the fuel rod is also of debate. Uranium's half-life means the battery would not expire for hundreds of years, also Duncan and Jeremie would have been severely poisoned from being around both enriched Uranium and the depleted fuel rod - therefore it seems Lead-210, a Uranium isotope with a twenty-two year half-life, is the used fuel - it only gives off particle radiation, which cannot penetrate the perspex sheath of the fuel rods, and which could be converted to energy by the same process we see in the scanners when a body is destroyed and rebuilt during virtualization and materialization, respectively.
Trivia
- The Supercomputer's design is based off of the original design for a real supercomputer called Jaguar.
- Franz stated that he "discovered" the Return to the Past feature. This suggests that he didn't build the supercomputer, or that he wasn't the only one who did. Prof. Tyron and Anthea are possible.
- The quantum data storage must be extremely volatile. Between Seasons 4 and 5, the data for 2 sectors degraded away. This suggests the supercomputer wasn't designed to be offline for a very long time. This is inconsistent because after Aelita was first put in the supercomputer, the system was off for 10 years until Jeremy rediscovered it. During that 10 year period, there was no obvious data degradation, aside from the loss of Aelita's memory, which was merely moved to sector 5. It's unknown why it was able to remain stable in storage for 10 years without problems, yet later suffered significant data degradation after only 1. There are a few explanations for this:
- It could be because Aelita (and Franz) was still in the supercomputer.
- Also could be possible that like Aelita's memories the data for the sectors are in sector 5
- Another possibility is that when Jermie and Aelita rebuilt the sectors between S3 and Episode Double take they made a mistake causing the degradation of the sectors for some mysterious reason or by human error
- It's also possible that it degraded during the 10 year period it just wasn't noticible as the only scene of Lyoko before it was shut down was in Aelita's flashbacks of the forest sector with Franz for all we know there was more than 5 sectors to start off with and it just degraded from X sectors to 5 to 3 over the years...
- Based on the fact that the supercomputer was shut off while Franz Hopper was inside the computer, we can infer either of two things. 1. Franz Hopper had the ability to control the physical aspects of the computer through the inside of the computer. (Because the computer was powered by a switch on the computer) or 2. Someone else had known about the computer and had shut off the computer.
Operating system - theory
- Based on what the screen looks like in the show, it is theorized that a type of Unix operating system is used in it. This is more possible being that Jeremie has to input a line of coding for nearly every task; similar to how a lot of Unix-based OSes work. Very little is known about the OS the supercomputer runs.
- The OS of the system is ill-defined, and the kernel of the OS is a mystery. It is not stated if it's a micro, macro, or exo kernel.
- Whenever Aelita used the interface at the outer shell of Carthage, Jeremie was locked out of the system. This suggests the system is either single-user, or has heavy security features. However X.A.N.A. and Jeremie were able to have towers active at the same time. This suggests the system uses a multi-user capable kernel.
- Despite maintaining Lyoko being such a critical function, the system was able to remain functional even with parts of Lyoko deleted at various points. Therefore maintaining Lyoko is not a core part of the operating system, although it may be a loadable module. This suggests the system is not a macro kernel. Additionally, the towers act as control for the machine's true power. This suggests that part of Lyoko is a set of abstraction layers/drivers for parts of the Supercomputer. Therefore, while it was not stated, it's probable that the Supercomputer uses a hybrid kernel with loadable modules.
- Based off what is seen in the cartoon, the Supercomputer may be a computer that runs an exo kernel that ships packets of data to other various electronics. These packets of data can range from a micro kernel of the Supercomputer's main kernel to drivers that give altercate the purpose of the device. This is semi-supported by X.A.N.A.'s ability to make electronics malfunction and even give them sub-human abilities.
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