How 10 quadrillion sums a second will make computer the world's fastest
Justin McCurry in Tokyo Tuesday July 26, 2005 Guardian
In the world of computers, it promises to be the biggest, fastest, and most mindboggling, of them all. Officials in Japan yesterday announced that they intend to build a supercomputer that will operate 73 times faster than the current top computer.
Number one at the moment is IBM's Blue Gene computer, in California, capable of handling 136.8 trillion mathematical calculations a second, or 136.8 teraflops. The Japanese machine, which could cost up to $900m, (about £515m) would leave it standing.
Japanese media reports said officials at the country's education and science ministry were aiming to develop a machine that could operate at 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion calculations a second. A computer that large needs tough challenges, and there are several being lined up for it.
In addition to tracking climate changes, this brute of a computer will be used to simulate the formation of the galaxy and to gauge human reactions to new drugs.
If all goes to plan, the machine will be up and running by March 2011.
Scientists rely on supercomputers, operating at what are barely comprehensible speeds, to conduct experiments - which are often simulations - that would take too long if standard hardware were used.
While the US is developing supercomputers to conduct nuclear weapons tests without the need to detonate an actual device, Japan is using the technology to track sea temperatures and rainfall in the hope of more accurately predicting natural disasters such as the fierce, and occasionally deadly, typhoons that sweep across the archipelago during the course of every summer and autumn.
China, with a cautious eye on its neighbour, is developing a system with a top speed of 100 teraflops. Beijing, which regards supercomputers as vital to its competitive credentials, has 19 machines in the top 500. Though it lags behind the US, Germany, Japan and Britain, China is the fastest-growing supercomputing market in Asia.
Japan's Earth Simulator, which occupies a space equivalent to four tennis courts, and is installed at the Earth Simulator Research and Development Centre, in Yokohama, was the fastest supercomputer in the world until it was overtaken by IBM's Blue Gene in 2004.
US machines currently occupy the top three slots in the global ranking of supercomputers, according to a list released last month at the international supercomputing conference, held in Heidelberg, Germany. The machines are powered by racks of thousands of processors, which, ironically, give them the unwieldy look of the very first computers.
Top of the flops
For computers, speed is everything. Speed is measured in "flops" - floating point operations per second, or the number of calculations a machine can complete in a second. Back in the 1970s, when the first supercomputers were being built, machines could achieve speeds of several million flops.
Since then, computers, even home PCs, have raised their speeds at an astonishing rate. Most home computers now achieve speeds of several billion flops.
But this pales in comparison to today's fastest supercomputers, such as IBM's Blue Gene. With 10 petaflops, this new computer, to be built in Japan, could operate at 10 quadrillion calculations a second (a quadrillion is 1,000 million million).
Flop size is important for complex scientific calculations but is also becoming increasingly significant elsewhere. Animation studios - such as the studio Pixar with its movies Toy Story and The Incredibles - are using powerful computers for films. Even the graphics on video games consoles will soon demand high flop levels. The next generation of Sony's PlayStation, due next year, is expected to compute at about two teraflops: that might be 5,000 times slower than Japan's proposed machine, but it's more than enough for most of us.
Bobbie Johnson
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