The superpowers have been competing for ingenuity for years now to design the most powerful supercomputers in the world. In the last TOP500 ranking, Japan surprised everyone by taking first place on the podium and ahead of the leaders in the ranking, the United States and China. A remarkable performance that has not been observed in almost a decade of competition.
Fugaku, whose name corresponds to the Japanese name for Mount Fuji, is the fruit of collaboration between Fujitsu and the Riken Center for Computational Science. Equipped with ARM processors and powered by the 48-core A64FX from Fujitsu, this marvel of technology has already successfully participated in research on the COVID-19 and will certainly make it possible, in the near future, to solve previously insoluble problems .
With its speed of 415 petaflops, or approximately 415 million billion operations per second, Fugaku becomes the fastest supercomputer in the world. It will also be fully functional from 2021.
Breathtaking performance
For the record, the TOP500 project aims to classify the 500 most powerful computers in the world.
The first place in this classification has been held by IBM Summit for 4 consecutive years and almost 70% of the supercomputers present in this classification belong to the USA and China.
The arrival of Japan at the head of this ranking has therefore created general surprise since it is the first time that the country of the rising sun has won first place on the podium since its coronation in 2011.
Even more impressive, Fugaku not only won first place in the TOP500. It also took first place in the Graph 500 rankings on data-intensive loads, HPL-AI on the convergence of High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence loads, and HPCG on data access limitations. A feat that has never been achieved so far, and by no existing supercomputer.
Possible applications
Supercomputers are mainly used in the fields of quantum computing or artificial intelligence. Fugaku, although not yet officially in operation, has however already participated in simulations and diagnostics relating to the COVID-19 epidemic.
An example of a simulation with Fugaku conducted by the director of the Riken Institute, Satoshi Matsuoka, moreover made it possible to conclude that at least 60% of the Japanese population should be equipped with devices for tracing the Coronavirus so that this approach carries its fruits. Other applications concerning the development of new drugs, the investigation of new energy solutions or the simulation of natural disasters are also envisaged.
Nevertheless, the presence of Fugaku at the head of the classification risks being ephemeral since the United States already plans, in the coming years, to launch supercomputers with a power measured in exaflops.
Fredzone
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