Japan will build a supercomputer that will be a thousand times more powerful than current ‘supermachines’ – Technology – Science and technology

The world has never seen such a supercomputer. Japan will build a machine that will be a thousand times more powerful than today’s fastest supercomputers. However, it will require energy equal to the output of 21 nuclear power plants to operate.

Illustrative photo – the American Summit supercomputer with a performance of 200 petaflops.

Japan plans to build the first “zetta-class” supercomputer, which is supposed to be up to 1,000 times more powerful than today’s fastest machines. This ambitious project, called “Fugaku Next”, is supposed to be fully operational by 2030 and its construction will start as early as 2025.

Its predecessor, the Fugaku supercomputer, which was put into operation in 2020, achieves a performance of 0.44 exaflops, which is 0.44 quintillion calculations per second. Despite being surpassed in 2022 by the American Frontier supercomputer with a performance of 1.2 exaflops, Fugaku is still among the most powerful machines in the world.

However, the new Fugaku Next is expected to achieve zettaflop performance, which in numbers means one sextillion calculations per second. To better imagine, this performance is 1,000 times higher than that of the fastest supercomputers in 2024. Japan decided to develop the computer mainly because of the effort to keep up with the rapid development of artificial intelligence and its applications in various fields of science and technology.

The project will be implemented in cooperation with the Japanese companies Riken and Fujitsu, which also participated in the development of the original Fugaku. Fugaku Next is expected to use components designed by Fujitsu to ensure compatibility between the two systems.

Inconceivably high consumption

One of the main challenges in developing a zetta-class supercomputer is its energy consumption. It is estimated that such a machine, using current technologies, would require energy equal to the output of 21 nuclear power plants. Therefore, at the same time, it will be necessary to develop new technologies and approaches that will enable the efficient operation of such a powerful device.

The Japanese government, through the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, has already allocated about 4.2 billion yen ($29 million) for the first year of the project, and the total cost could reach up to 110 billion yen ($761 million).

If the project can be implemented according to plan, Fugaku Next will become the most powerful supercomputer in the world and push the boundaries of computing technology to a new level. This progress will make it possible to solve complex tasks in the field of artificial intelligence, climate change modeling, the development of new drugs and many other areas that require enormous computing power.