Japan is developing world's most powerful supercomputer
Technology
Japan's Fugaku is currently considered to be the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world.
(Web Desk) - Japan is building the first ever "zeta-class" supercomputer that will be 1,000 times faster than today's most powerful supercomputers.
The supercharged machine which could cost more than $750 million to build will be fully operational by 2025.
These super-charged machines will assist Japan to keep up with the pace of artificial intelligence (AI) development that is expected to be fully operational by 2030.
The decision to build such a super-powered machine has been made "in order to keep up with the development of scientific research using AI,
The supercomputer could reach speeds on a zetaFLOPS scale which has never been achieved before, Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) disclosed in its statements on August 28 announcing plans for it.
Floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) is used to measure how fast computers can solve problems where one floating-point operation is a single calculation.
A supercomputer with a speed of 1 zetaFLOPS could make one sextillion (1 followed by 21 zeros) calculations per second.
Today's most powerful supercomputers have only just broken the exaFLOPS barrier, meaning they can make just over one quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeros) calculations per second.
The proposed supercomputer is being touted as the successor to Japan's Fugaku supercomputer (0.44 exaFLOPS), which previously held the title of the world's fastest supercomputer
Fugaku is currently considered to be the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world.
The U.S.'s Frontier supercomputer (1.2 exaFLOPS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee clinched the title of the most powerful supercomputer by dethroning Fugaku in 2022.
