Largest PC in the world built to save the planet
Undercurrents | 25.11.2002 13:02
November 19
Japan's 'Earth Simulator' is World's Fastest Computer
It didn't get a speeding ticket, but a Japanese "Earth Simulator" has zoomed to first-place as the world's fastest computer. The ultra-high-speed parallel computing system in Yokohama, Japan consists of 640 supercomputers connected by a high-speed network. It was built by the NEC Corporation and began warm-up operations in March.
By revving up to 35.86 TeraFlops (trillion operations per second), the Earth Simulator left behind in second and third place newly installed supercomputers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. A list of the top 500 fastest computers was released on November 15, put together by researchers in Germany and the United States.
One TeraFlops (TFLOPS) is a term for a trillion floating-point operations per second. "Tera" is a prefix for one trillion (ten raised to the twelfth power).
The computing system is tasked to study and help predict environmental problems on Earth, such as global warming and the El Nino phenomenon, in addition to earthquakes and other natural disasters.
Tetsuya Satoh, Director-General of the Earth Simulator Center, said the system is on duty to "predict the future of the Earth accurately and rapidly, and to build a harmonious relationship between the Earth and human beings."
Japan's 'Earth Simulator' is World's Fastest Computer
It didn't get a speeding ticket, but a Japanese "Earth Simulator" has zoomed to first-place as the world's fastest computer. The ultra-high-speed parallel computing system in Yokohama, Japan consists of 640 supercomputers connected by a high-speed network. It was built by the NEC Corporation and began warm-up operations in March.
By revving up to 35.86 TeraFlops (trillion operations per second), the Earth Simulator left behind in second and third place newly installed supercomputers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. A list of the top 500 fastest computers was released on November 15, put together by researchers in Germany and the United States.
One TeraFlops (TFLOPS) is a term for a trillion floating-point operations per second. "Tera" is a prefix for one trillion (ten raised to the twelfth power).
The computing system is tasked to study and help predict environmental problems on Earth, such as global warming and the El Nino phenomenon, in addition to earthquakes and other natural disasters.
Tetsuya Satoh, Director-General of the Earth Simulator Center, said the system is on duty to "predict the future of the Earth accurately and rapidly, and to build a harmonious relationship between the Earth and human beings."
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