After seven years in the works, the world's fastest supercomputer has officially been completed in Japan and is now available for researchers to start using, for projects ranging from fighting climate change to discovering new drugs.
Builds for the Fugaku supercomputer, hosted at Japanese scientific research institute Riken, started in 2014 in collaboration with Fujitsu, with the device pitched to become a future pillar of the country's high-performance computing infrastructure.
The delivery of Fugaku's total 432 racks was completed in May 2020; since then, trials of the system have been on-going, mainly with projects aiming to accelerate research to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The computer is now fully open for shared use, and Japan's Research Organization for Information Science and Technology (RIST) has already selected 74 research projects that will be implemented from next month.
RIST has also urged researchers to submit proposals for new projects, and invited all applications to be sent in as part of a call for Trial Access Projects.
Together with Riken, Fujitsu will continue to monitor the operation of Fugaku to ensure stable performance, while also working to enhance the user environment, and to provide better supercomputing technologies.
By Daphne Leprince-Ringuet on ZDNet
Image Source: Data Center Knowledge
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