Fugaku, Japan’s latest supercomputer has taken the top spot in the annual Top500 supercomputer speed ranking. It was developed within the country’s state-backed Riken research institute.
Supercomputer Fugaku
With this fastest computer ranking, it marks the return of a Japanese supercomputer at the top spot after nine years. Usually, Fastest supercomputer rankings normally bounce between American- and Chinese-made systems.
It not only has the fastest computing speed, but it has also attained top rankings in other publications such as Graph 500, HPL-AI and HPCG. It is for the first time a supercomputer has ever led all four rankings at once.
No previous supercomputer based on ARM processors has topped the list.
Summit system, developed by the U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory previously claimed this title in November 2019. Fugaku is ranked the world’s top supercomputer in June. As it performed over 415 quadrillion computations per second, around 2.8 times faster than the Summit system.
Supercomputers are normally used for the jobs that require high performance specialized calculations like quantum mechanics, weather forecasting, space explorations and so on.
Institute’s computational science center Director, Satoshi Matsuoka, said, “We were able to stand out in all the key specifications for supercomputers, and demonstrate it is the world’s highest performing. We expect it will aid in solving difficult societal problems such as the fight against the novel coronavirus,”
Fugaku is currently used on an experimental basis for research on possible medicines to fight the novel coronavirus. Fugaku is due to reach fully-operational parameters at the start of the 2021 business year.
