Japan's minister of trade and development announced that he has allocated nearly 200 million to build the world's best supercomputer. And not just for international prestige
Are you curious to know which is the most powerful computer in the world? Then you'll have to plan a rather long trip. At the moment, in fact, the two superpowers in the field of supercomputers are, coincidentally, China and the United States.
According to the statements of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Japan, the country of the Rising Sun is ready to invest an amount close to 17 billion yen (about 200 million dollars) to build a supercomputer capable of 130 billion (or 1 million billion) mathematical operations per second (in technical jargon, with a power of 130 petaflops). Enough numbers to make it jump to the top of the list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. And probably in the very first positions of the ranking of the most expensive computers in history. The Sunway TaihuLight, the Chinese supercomputer that now holds the record, is capable of "just" 93 million billion operations.
The supercomputer for artificial intelligence
The rather large budget that Japan intends to bet on its supercomputer is not justified, of course, by mere reasons of international prestige. Although having the most powerful computer in the world in their country will certainly be a matter of pride for Japanese scientists and academics, the supercomputer will have more "material" purposes. Or intelligent, you might say. The goal, in fact, is to make Japan a superpower in the field of artificial intelligence, so as to allow the manufacturing sector to return to be the most innovative and competitive in the world.