NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu Want Super Computer – 10 quadrillion floating point OPS

Posted by Bill Belew on June 18th, 2010 in Japan | Comments Off

Japan's Science and Technology Ministry has set aside about $1 billion through fiscal 2011 to build a supercomputer capable of crunching data at a rate of 10 quadrillion floating point operations per second.

If accomplished, Japan will reclaim the title of world's fastest computer now held by IBM's Blue Gene.

The public research institute Riken has recruited Hitachi Ltd, NEC Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. to collaborate on the development dubbed Next-Generation Supercomputer.

Originally it was to be a competition between

Fujitsu and Hitachi/NEC.

Now, it will be a combined effort.blue.gene.ibm.jpg

The winner? I don't reckon it will make any difference to me. 

How much is a quadrillion anyway?

1,000 million million or in some cases 10 with 24 zeroes.

Another question – What needs to be processed that fast?

Source – Nikkei


 

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