Japan starts construction of supercomputer with computing power of one exaflop

Japan has started building a supercomputer with a computing power of one exaflops, or a trillion calculations per second. If the country achieves this, it would have the fastest supercomputer yet.

The new supercomputer, which has not yet been named, will replace the ‘K’ supercomputer upon completion. It has a computing power of 10.5 petaflops. In comparison, a thousand petaflops equals one exaflops. An exaflops equals a trillion floating point calculations per second and a petaflops equals a quadrillion flops. The computers are managed by the Japanese research institute Riken. The new supercomputer will be used for scientific research, just like the old one.

The current fastest supercomputer in the world is located in China and is called the Tianhe-2. It has a computing power of 54 petaflops. Riken expects the new supercomputer to be fully operational in 2020, Riken reports.