Written by Aryan Pratap Singh, a grade 8 student.

Imagine performing over 415 quadrillion computations per second! It’s a feat no ordinary computer could achieve and that’s what makes Fugaku, the world’s fastest supercomputer so special. The Japanese supercomputer, named after Mt Fuji and jointly developed by Fujitsu and Riken ( a large scientific research institute in Japan) topped all four categories in the Top500 supercomputer speed rankings in the last week of June. According to Riken, it is the first time that a supercomputer has topped all four categories.

Fugaku was developed at Fujitsu’s facility in a city called Kobe. It forms a key foundation for powerful simulations used in scientific research and the development of industrial and military technologies.

It was ranked No. 1 after it performed computations that were around three times faster than the Summit system developed by the United States which secured the top spot in the last ranking.

Located at the Riken Institute’s Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Fugaku is currently being operated on a trial basis trying to find a vaccine for COVID-19 and is expected to be fully operational by 2021.

Fugaku replaces the “K” supercomputer (also built by Riken) once the fastest in the world. Fugaku is currently occupying K’s old position, where K stood for over 9 years.

Japan last took the top spot in 2011 with the K supercomputer. Since then China and the USA have taken the top spot with their deep pockets and teams working on building these billion-dollar machines.

Written by Aryan Pratap Singh.
Aryan is a grade 8 student in Modern School, New Delhi. He is a keen writer and his current interests are World War II, warships and fighter planes, world leaders, mobile video games, Greek and Egyptian mythology. 

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