Japan intends to deliver an exascale supercomputer in six years. The firm completion date makes Japan novel among the nations in the race to build exascale systems.
The Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, already home to that nation's largest computer system, said last week it will lead Japan's exascale program, with "successful development of the exascale supercomputer scheduled for completion by 2020."
"We will devote our energy to this project," said Kimihiko Hirao, director of the Riken institute, in a statement. An exascale system "will be a great boon for science and technology, as well as industry," he said.
Computerworld - Japan intends to deliver an exascale supercomputer in six years. The firm completion date makes Japan novel among the nations in the race to build exascale systems.The Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, already home to that nation's largest computer system, said last week it will lead Japan's exascale program, with "successful development of the exascale supercomputer scheduled for completion by 2020."
"We will devote our energy to this project," said Kimihiko Hirao, director of the Riken institute, in a statement. An exascale system "will be a great boon for science and technology, as well as industry," he said.
The U.S., meanwhile, is aiming for an "early 2020s" delivery of an exascale system , a Dept. of Energy official said during a presentation that coincided with the annual supercomputing conference, SC13, in November.
In December, Congress approved a fiscal 2014 defense budget bill that requires development of an exascale system within a 10-year period, or by 2024. This is an improvement over an earlier Senate defense funding bill that included a "20 year plan."
The Europeans are developing an ARM-based exascale system and have set a delivery goal of 2020. That goal, though, doesn't have the stake-in-the-ground clarity of Japan. China, which presently operates the world's fastest supercomputer according to the Top 500 rankings, is believed to be targeting 2018-2020 timeframe for exascale delivery, but has not yet made an official announcement.
An exascale system is capable of a quintillion, or a million trillion, floating point operations per second. It is approximately 1,000 faster than a single petaflop system. The fastest systems in use today are well under 50 petaflops.
Exascale development may be a race but no one has yet defined what will constitute a winner. Today, the fastest supercomputers are determined by their ranking on the Top 500 list. But if a nation deploys an exascale system that uses 100 MWs of power, and another nation deploys one two years later with technology that uses a third as much power, which nation has won?
It now costs about $1 million a year to run a 1 megawatt system, and current supercomputers are already in the range of 10 megawatts. There are numerous technical challenges to reduce those power requirements.
For instance, memory is a major challenge for exascale developers. DRAM memory is too slow and expensive to support exascale, but scientists aren't sure yet what will replace it.
Along with the race to deliver exascale, another technology competition is taking shape: quantum computing.
The U.K. last month said it is investing $444 million in quantum computing over the next five years. The money will fund a network of quantum computing centers.
"Science is a personal priority of mine," said U.K. Chancellor George Osborne, in a speech last month outlining the quantum computing effort.
Quantum computing uses subatomic particles and has the potential to leapfrog all other forms of computing. Today, computation is based on bits that can be either 0 or 1, with calculations done one after the other. But quantum can hold those states, 0 and 1, simultaneously increasing processing power exponentially.
Subscribe to Science 26 September 2013 3:05 pm , Vol. 341 , #6153 Sequester Takes Uneven Bite From Agency Budgets For nearly a year, research leaders have been warning that the 5% budget cut known as the sequester would have dire... U.S. Carbon Plan Relies on Uncertain Capture Technology A new proposal from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would place tighter limits on carbon dioxide emissions... Government's Start Leaves Scientists Uneasy Scientific leaders in Australia are quietly pleading their case to their new government, hoping to dissuade it from... DNA Sleuths Track C. difficile Infection Routes Patients hit with C. difficile often have violent diarrhea, which spreads the bug easily in unsanitary conditions... Zombie Endocrine Disruptors May Threaten Aquatic Life Many U.S. ranchers implant cattle with the synthetic androgen trenbolone acetate to beef them up, but concerns have... Special News Package: Taming a Mercurial Element Mercury has beguiled people for centuries, but the heavy metal also poses serious health and environmental dangers... With Pact's Completion, the Real Work Begins More than 140 nations will meet next month in Japan to formally adopt the Minamata Convention on Mercury. It calls for... In Minamata, Mercury Still Divides The new global agreement to reduce mercury emissions is named after Minamata, a small seaside town in southern Japan... 
DNA Sleuths Track C. difficile Infection Routes 
In Minamata, Mercury Still Divides 
ScienceShot: Controlling a Leg That's Gone 
Flu 
NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and industry (METI) released the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) to the worldwide public on June 29, 2009.