Japan plans 130-petaflops China-beating number-crunching supercomputer
Japan is reportedly planning to build a 130-petaflops supercomputer costing $173 million (£131 million) that is due for completion next year.
Satoshi Sekiguchi, a director-general at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, where the computer will be built, told Reuters: "As far as we know, there is nothing out there that is as fast."
According to the Top 500 site listing the world's fastest computers, the current number-crunching champ is China's 93-petaflops Sunway TaihuLight, followed by its Tianhe-2, coming in at 34 petaflops. Japan's most powerful system at the moment is a 13.5 petaflops machine. Overall, Japan has the fourth-largest number of supercomputers in the Top 500 listing, after the US, China, and Germany. The UK comes in sixth; the most powerful system in the country is housed at the Met Office, and has a max performance of 6.8 petaflops.
