AJISS-Commentary No.136 “World’s Most Powerful Computer: Does It Reflect Japan’s National Power?” by Akinori Yonezawa
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies (AJISS) has just published the AJISS-Commentary No. 136”World’s Most Powerful Computer: Does It Reflect Japan’s National Power?” by Akinori Yonezawa, Co-Director of the RIKEN Advanced Institute of Computational Science and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo ([email protected]).
The Japanese supercomputer “Kei,” developed jointly by Fujitsu and RIKEN as a national project, took first place in the top 500 list at the International Conference on Supercomputing held in Hamburg, Germany, in June. The so-called “K Computer” outstripped its competitors, being more than three times faster than the second-place Chinese Tianhe-1A and more than four times faster than the US’ third-ranked “Jaguar” (developed by IBM). Given that the competition takes place every six months, the K Computer is expected to maintain its lead as the world’s most powerful computer for at least a year or so.