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Japan Builds World's Fastest Computer

Posted by michael on from the rice-rocket dept.

claylikethemud writes "The New York Times reports that Japan has built the world's most powerful supercomputer from "640 specialized nodes that are in turn composed of 5,104" NEC processors. The machine boasts the computing power equivalent to the 20 fastest American supercomputers combined, and with a top speed of 35.6 teraflops, outpaces the next fastest machine, the ASCI White Pacific, by more than factor of five. Applications include climate modeling, global warming prediction, and other non-weapons research."

2 of 505 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Non Weapon research?? by zapfie · · Score: 5, Informative

    Non Weapon research??

    Yeah right !

    Uh.. from Chapter II, Section 9 of the Japanese constitution:

    "Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."

    The Japanese are only able to maintain a defensive force, not an army, so even if it was weapons research, it would only be for use in self defense.

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  2. total number of processors is 5120 by wapentake · · Score: 5, Informative

    Contrary to rumor,
    the machine is constructed from 640 nodes, with 8 vector processors per node, and 16GB RAM per node. That totals 5120 processors and 10TB memory.

    See http://www.es.jamstec.go.jp/esc/eng/outline/outlin e02.html

    Also of note:
    peak performance per processor: 8 GFLOPS
    total peak performance: 40 TFLOPS