Japan-Based Fugaku Supercomputer Named World’s Fastest Computer

Fugaku, a Japan-based supercomputer, developed by Fujitsu and Japan’s Riken Research Institute, has been named as the world’s fastest computer in an independent survey. This marks the return of a Japanese supercomputer at the top spot after nine years, beating out its US and Chinese counterparts. It is also the first time that a supercomputer based on ARM processors has topped the benchmarking list. Fugaku has further secured the number one position in other major rankings that test supercomputers on different parameters.

Supercomputers are used to perform highly complicated tasks such as quantum mechanics, weather forecasting, space explorations, and so on, which require high performance specialised calculations.

Fugaku secures number spot in TOP500 ranking

Fugaku on Monday featured at the spot in the biennial TOP500 publication. The last time a Japan-based supercomputer secured the top position was in 2011, also developed by Riken and Fujitsu. The supercomputer is known as the “K computer”.

This year’s TOP500 is followed by two supercomputers from the US and two from China. Overall, the US has four supercomputers listed in TOP500′ top ten list.

Supercomputer Fugaku

Fugaku is powered by Fujitsu’s 48-core A64FX SoC and is 2.8 times faster than the IBM’s Summit supercomputer – which holds the second spot in this year’s Top500 list. The Japanese supercomputer has also attained top rankings in other publications such as Graph 500, HPL-AI, and HPCG.

Fujitsu in the blog post announced that this is the first time a supercomputer topped the major rankings simultaneously.

Speaking more about the achievement, Director of Riken Institute, Satoshi Matsuoka says, “In addition to its use as a supercomputer, I hope that the leading-edge IT technology developed for it [Fugaku] will contribute to major advances on difficult social challenges such as COVID-19.”

The developers also announced that Fugaku is set to go into full operation next fiscal year.

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