Fujitsu’s Fugaku Still World’s Fastest

FUJITSU’S FUGAKU STILL WORLD’S FASTEST

December 13, 2021

Fujitsu’s Fugaku supercomputer retains its position as the fastest computer in the world, according to Top500, which on November 16, 2021 published its 58^th annual edition of the world’s fastest computers.  Fugaku dethroned IBM’s Summit as the world’s fastest in June 2020.

Fugaku demonstrated 442 Petaflops (floating point operations) of performance running the HPL benchmark, nearly 3 times the speed of IBM’s Summit.  Fugaku uses 7,630,848 A64FX 2.2Ghz ARM processor cores built with 7nm technology.   It is the first ARM based machine to achieve a world’s #1 ranking.  The operating system is a custom RedHat McKernel Linux kernel.  Fugaku consumes 29,899 kW of energy and occupies more space than a basketball court.

Installed at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, its total program cost, including development of new technologies, was $1.213 billion USD.  It has been in development since 2014.  Among its many intended uses are simulations of natural disasters; weather and climate forecasting; development of clean energy and exploring the fundamental laws of nature.

The supercomputing industry is still awaiting the introduction of the first exascale computer. An exascale computer is capable of 1 exaflop of performance (1 billion teraflops or 10¹⁸ flops) running the HPL benchmark. Fugaku’s performance is 0.442 exaflops.   The first exascale supercomputer was planned for introduction in 2021 but that goal appears to be too optimistic and now 2022 appears more likely. China, the European Union and the United States are all racing to introduce the first exascale computer.

Next: The examachines are coming NOW! (part 2 of 3)