The race to be the best is one that is neverending. Once you’ve completed a project that takes the “best” moniker, you can expect many others to challenge your project for the title of “the best.” Such is the case for the supercomputer as Japan has announced that it intends to build the world’s fastest supercomputer to provide the country’s manufactureres with a platform for research that could help them develop and improve driverless cars, robotics and medical diagnostics.
In a report by Reuters, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan will spend 19.5 billion yen on the project. Bidding for the project, codenamed ABCI (AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure), has since begun and the winner will be announced after the 8th of December. The successful bidder will be tasked with constructing a supercomputer that is capable of achieving 130 petaflops, besting China’s Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer which has a computing power of 93 petaflops.
According to anonymous sources, the ABCI supercomputer is expected to come online in 2018. Once operational, Japan intends to rent out time on the platform to Japanese companies who currently outsource data crunching to foreign firms such as Google and Microsoft.
Source: Reuters