The Top500.org website has unveiled the 55 th edition of the ranking of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Japan takes first place thanks to its brand new machine called Fugaku. With a power of 415 petaflops, it is the first supercomputer based on ARM processors to dominate this list.
Japan now has the most powerful supercomputer in the world, according to the 55 th edition of the ranking Top500 which has just been published. Called Fugaku, in reference to Mount Fuji, it was built by Riken and Fujitsu , in the city of Kobe. According to the HPL test, this new machine reaches a power of 415.5 petaflops, or 415 x 10 15 operations per second. The supercomputer far exceeds the American Summit, which has so far been the fastest with 148 petaflops, or 2.8 times less.
This is the first time in nine years that Japan climbed up the ranking Top500 , from the supercomputer K . Fugaku also took first place in the Graph 500, HPL-AI and HPCG tests, a placement never before obtained simultaneously by a single supercomputer.
A supercomputer made up of 7.3 million cores
The manufacturers opted for A64FX 48-core SoC produced by Fujitsu. For the first time, a supercomputer based on ARM processors dominates the Top500 ranking . The test was performed with 396 racks, containing 152,064 A64FX processors, or 7.3 million ARM cores.
Fugaku has already been put to work, well ahead of the original schedule. Its launch was scheduled for 2021, but it has been brought forward one year to assist in the fight against the Covid-19 . The supercomputer works on two research axes. The first research is carried out at the molecular level, which attempts to see the effect of existing drugs on the virus . The second, at the macroscopic level, is concerned with the means of transmission and the effect on society. However, Fugaku is not expected to reach full power until next year.