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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."

13 of 505 comments (clear)

  1. Did anyone see this coming? by saihung · · Score: 5, Insightful

    With all of the supercomputer posts on /. recently, I've seen a lot of talk about the various ASCI projects in the works by IBM and others. No one even mentioned this before. I'm glad to see that someone is building supercomputers for reasons other than nuclear weapons research though.

    1. Re:Did anyone see this coming? by JabberWokky · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I'm glad to see that someone is building supercomputers for reasons other than nuclear weapons research though.

      For some reason Japan isn't all that keen on nuclear weapons.

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  2. More protectionism by saihung · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Also worth noting is that the article mentions that the US gov't has blocked sales of these machines because they believe that NEC is "dumping" them on the US market - eg selling them below cost. Has there been any WTO action on these restrictions? Wouldn't this be a perfect test case for getting US trade restrictions struck down?

  3. *sighs* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't you wonder why they bother? They're only going to have to destroy the thing when it sprouts purple tentacles and destroys Tokyo.

  4. 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.

    --
    slashdot!=valid HTML
  5. So when does a computer... by Bnonn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...become a huge goddamned distributed-network-in-a-room?

  6. Re:US:bombs vs. Japan: environment by Ed+Avis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What surprises me is that this is the first we (Slashdot readers) have heard about it. There have been several headlines saying 'new supercomputer planned' with a story 'it will be quite fast, and finished in 2004'... but this new world's-fastest-computer just suddenly appeared without being preannounced.

    Are any of the supercomputer projects in the pipeline expected to be faster than this?

    --
    -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
  7. Pictures here! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Pictures here. so cool!

  8. Re:US:bombs vs. Japan: environment by macshit · · Score: 5, Insightful
    That is probably why they don't have a military (I think they now have a token military but not a real one)



    Actually, Japan has one of the largest military budgets in the world. They call their military the `Self Defense Forces', but it's the real thing, with big ships, tanks, fighter jets, and all that good stuff. No nukes though.

    --
    We live, as we dream -- alone....
  9. Imagine a ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Jeez, could you imagine a single one of those...

  10. Re:US:bombs vs. Japan: environment by smagoun · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hell, with a budget of 265 Billion, who are WE defending ourselves from? Everyone else.....at once?

  11. Re: Possibilities by Gannoc · · Score: 5, Funny
    6) Make a fully synthetic actor that can outact, say, Keanu Reeves.


    Eliza did that several years ago.

  12. 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