Japan builds computer that does 8 quadrillion calculations per second

TOKYO—A Japanese supercomputer built by Fujitsu Co. grabbed the title of world's best-performing machine from a Chinese competitor, returning Japan to the top of the computer arms race for the first time in seven years.

Installed at Japan's Institute of Physical and Chemical Research and also known as Riken, the Japanese government-funded "K Computer" performs more than eight quadrillion (8,000 trillion) calculations per second. K Computer is a play on the Japanese word "kei" for the number 10 quadrillion, which will be the number of calculations the machine is targeted to handle once it is completed in 2012

The Japanese machine is a major step up from existing supercomputers. It is more powerful than the next five fastest computer systems combined, and can perform three times as many calculations per second as the No. 2 supercomputer, designed by China's National University of Defense Technology, according to the "Top500," a compilation of the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world, determined by a group of academic and government researchers.

Investing more than 100 billion yen ($1.25 billion) in the K Computer project, the government aims to position Japan among the leaders for supercomputers, which can be used to tackle complex problems related to climate change and weather patterns. The project also aims to increase the competitiveness of Japan Inc. by providing a powerful computational tool to develop breakthroughs in drugs, materials and new technologies.

The K Computer is packed with computing muscle. It stitches together 68,544 processors, each equipped with eight cores for a total 548,352 electronic brains. At full capacity, it aims to have 640,000 electronic brains. Fujitsu said this would provide the machine with enough horsepower to slash the time required to run a simulation of a beating human heart reacting to new medicine to two days from two years.

Japan last held the top spot in 2004, with NEC Corp.'s Earth Simulator. In a sign of the rates of improvement for supercomputers, the K Computer is more than 200 times more powerful than the Earth Simulator. By 2018, Japan, the U.S. and China are targeting the development of supercomputer capable of doing 1 quintillion (1 million trillion ) calculations per second.

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