Japan to build "world's fastest" computer again

AFTER MUCH national humiliation about losing the title of the owners of the world's fastest computer to the Americans, Japan is splashing out on a new bit of kit.

Boffins hired by the Japanese government claim that their machine will be 73 times faster than the American Blue Gene/L system supercomputer developed by IBM at its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Blue Gene is capable of 136.8 teraflops, or 136.8 trillion calculations per second. According to a spokesBoffinette at Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology its computer will run at 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion calculations per second.

According to Kyodo News, it will cost the Japanese (US) $714 million to $893 million to beat Big Blue. Apparently the new supercomputer will be used to simulate the formation of galaxies and the interactions between medicine and the human body. It will also cast horoscopes, no doubt. µ

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