The Fugaku supercomputer located at the Riken Scientific Research Center leads the list of the Top500 fastest computer systems in the world in 2020.

Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer. Photo: Kyodo.

Fugaku co-developed by Riken and Fujitsu, with the backing of the Japanese government, has a processing speed of up to 415.53 petaflops or 415.53 million billion calculations per second – 2.8 times America’s fastest 2019 supercomputer, IBM Summit, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the state of Tennesse.

The Top500 list is voted twice a year based on processing speed in a benchmark test established by experts from Germany and the US. IBM Summit took the lead four times in a row in the past two years before being overtaken by Fugaku.

Fugaku in Japanese means Mount Fuji. This computer system has been in development for six years and is scheduled to commence full-time from April 2021. However, it has been used to study the Covid-19 crisis, by running a simulation of the airborne droplet propagation in environments such as offices and trains.

Supercomputers are an important tool in advanced scientific research because they can perform quick calculations in every field, from weather forecasts to missile development. “I hope the leading technologies equipped to Fugaku can help us solve social challenges such as Covid-19,” Satoshi Matsuoka, head of the Riken Center for Scientific Research, said in a press release. declare.

Fugaku has a processing speed of up to 415.53 million billion operations per second. Photo: NY Times.

Besides the Top500, Fugaku also topped several other supercomputer performance charts such as Graph500, HPCG and HPL-AI and became the first computer system to rank number one in all four lists.

The world’s fastest supercomputer race in nearly a decade is dominated by the US and China. Fugaku is the first Japanese representative to achieve this award since 2012.