Japan, already home to one of the world's fastest supercomputers in Fugaku, is gearing up for an even more powerful machine.
The planned Fugaku Next aims to be a thousand times faster than current systems, reaching the unprecedented zettaFLOPS level.
A zettaFLOPS is a quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeros) floating-point operations per second. This would make Fugaku Next the first "zetta-class" supercomputer globally.
For comparison, the US's Frontier supercomputer currently operates at 1.1 exaFLOPS (1.1 quintillion FLOPS).
The Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) has approved construction of Fugaku Next, with a projected completion date in 2030.
The government has allocated 110 billion Japanese Yen (US$780 million) for the project.
One key application for Fugaku Next is artificial intelligence. The demanding computations involved in generative AI models like ChatGPT could significantly benefit from such a powerful machine.
Supercomputers have proven invaluable to scientists in various fields, from simulating black holes to modeling Earth's future. With continued advancements in supercomputing, we can expect even more groundbreaking discoveries.
Unlike quantum computers, supercomputers are essentially scaled-up versions of everyday computers. Their strength lies in their ability to handle massive simulations involving numerous variables.
A zetta-class machine could potentially process more data faster, leading to more detailed and accurate results.
The Singularity Is Nearer:
When We Merge with AI
"Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence."—Bill Gates