Japan is building a super-fast computer, the first of its kind, which will be 1,000 times faster than any computer we have now. It will be ready to use in 2030. It will help Japan stay ahead in developing artificial intelligence (AI).
According to Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), development of a successor to the country’s flagship supercomputer, Fugaku, will begin in 2025. The supercomputer could reach speeds on a zettaflops scale, which has never been achieved before. A zetaFLOPS represents one sextillion (1 followed by 21 zeros) calculations per second.
According to Live Science “Floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) is used to measure how fast computers can solve problems-where one floating-point operation is a single calculation. Today’s most powerful supercomputers have only just broken the exaFLOPS barrier, meaning they can make just over one quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeros) calculations per second.” Unlike quantum computers, supercomputers are not too different from the desktops and laptops we all use every day; they are just scaled up to an incredibly high level. They are still based on processors, memory, and storage, but taken to extremes.
Its in interesting announcement to sure, but smells of an excuse to get more research money, government or otherwise, for further development. Will it help man get to creating Artificial Intelligence, not sure. I bet not.