The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will spend $173 million and on the computer and the computer will be capable of making 130 quadrillion calculations per second or you can say 130 petaflops in scientific parlance – as early as next year, sources involved in the project told Reuters. Currently, China’s Sunway TaihuLight holds the record with 93 petaflops capacity and is right now the world’s fastest supercomputer. So, Japan’s computer will be fast and the supercomputer could make an appearance by 2017 from the country’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. Satoshi Sekiguchi, a director general at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology said: “As far as we know, there is nothing out there that is as fast”. The fastest supercomputer ever built in Japan is Oakforest-PACS which is developed by Fujitsu, is only capable of 13.6 petaflops. According to Gizmodo, “The move comes at a time when Japan hopes to return to its glory days as top dog in technology. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has recently pushed for his government to work more closely with private industry to assure that Japan leads the way in robotics, batteries, artificial intelligence and other key areas of growth.” However, one of the essential areas of improvement that may be accelerated by the computer is AI (artificial intelligence). This is because a computer performs faster and faster calculations. Hence, the scientists hope that it will be able to more exactly imitate our brains’ neural pathways, through the deep learning technology which could essentially aid in self-driving car technology, better factory automation, as well as improvements in medical technology also. Bidding for the project has previously opened and will close on December 8th. Work is awaited to begin as early as next year
