Japan pins its hopes on fastest supercomputer to regain its tech mojo
Tokyo — Japan plans to build the world’s fastest supercomputer to help its manufacturers develop and improve driverless cars, robotics and medical diagnostics. The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry will spend ¥19.5bn on the previously unreported project, a budget breakdown shows. The government aims to regain Japan’s mojo in the world of technology after losing its edge in many electronic fields with intensifying competition from South Korea and China, home to the world’s current best-performing machine. In a move to vault Japan to the top of the supercomputing heap, its engineers will be tasked with building a machine that can make 130 quadrillion calculations a second — 130 petaflops in scientific terms — as early as next year, project sources said. At that speed, Japan’s computer would be ahead of China’s Sunway Taihulight, which is capable of 93 petaflops. "As far as we know, there is nothing out there that is as fast," said Satoshi Sekiguchi, a director-general at Japan’s Na...
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