The Japanese supercomputer Fugaku beat its rivals in China and the United States to become the fastest supercomputer in the world.
Fugaku was developed by Fujitsu and the Riken National Research Institute of Japan. This supercomputer did 442 petaflops, or 442 trillion operations per second. Fugaku also topped three other categories, including AI processing performance and big data capacity.
With exceptional computing power, Fugaku lags far behind IBM’s Summit supercomputer with 148 petaflops. The results, compiled by a panel of international experts, are published in June and November of each year.
Fugaku is a supercomputer worth up to $ 1.22 billion. Picture: Yoshiyuki Tamai.
Fugaku is the successor to the K supercomputer that was at the top in 2011. The 130 billion yen ($ 1.22 billion) system became fully operational in March from pharmaceutical research and big data analytics. Meanwhile, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association also plans to use Fugaku to help automakers develop stronger vehicle structures by using artificial intelligence to investigate vehicle components.
According to Riken, Fugaku can support research and analysis in any field with ease. This month, Fujitsu is using Fugaku’s simulation feature to create a chemical that is used to treat Covid-19.
Although Japan has returned to the top position with Fugaku, the current supercomputer race is just a “double horse” between the United States and China. Both countries intend to use supercomputers not only for industrial purposes, but also for military research, including the development of nuclear weapons.
In particular, the United States is currently working on a next-generation supercomputer with the ability to calculate up to 1,000 petaflops, twice as fast as Fugaku. Currently, both the United States and China are competing to produce supercomputers that achieve “exascale” status, which can do a billion billion calculations per second. The United States is said to be working on the Exascale Computing Project, scheduled for completion in 2021.
Meanwhile, China is even stronger with three machines of similar speed located at Qingdao National Marine Science and Technology Laboratory, Tianjin National Supercomputing Center (expected to be completed). Completed this year) and the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center (expected to be completed in 2022). ). However, these projects are still kept secret.
Supercomputers are huge computer systems, with a computing power millions of times greater than that of conventional computers, capable of solving the most complex scientific problems in the world. They are applied in almost all fields such as nuclear missile test simulation, weather forecasting, climate research, computer encryption strength testing …
Nhu phuc (according to the Nikkei Asia)
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