Japan is planning an extreme supercomputer

IBMs Blue Gene/L is at the moment the market’s unthreatened king of the hill, which is pretty clear if take a peak at Top500. One of the systems that was taken down a few pegs was Japan’s fastest supercomputer, Earth-Simulator, which for long was located at the top of the list. Fourth place is apparently not enough for the proud Japanese and the yare planning a supercomputer that is more than 73 times faster than IBM Blue Gene/L. A source has told CNN.com that this system will be able to compute up to 10 petaflops (10 000 teraflops) which you can compare with the current number one: Blue Gene/L system at 136.8 teraflops. As it seems Japan “wants” to build this computer but since the project is expected to cost $570 million this is hardly something you can decide over a cup of coffee.

Source: CNN.com