Fugaku Supercomputer

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The world’s most powerful supercomputer Fugaku is fully developed in Japan. This marks the end of a seven-years long development procedure for Fugaku, which started developing in 2014 in collaboration with Fujitsu.

About Fugaku

• The computer has 100 times the application performance of the K supercomputer and is developed to implement high-resolution, long-duration and large-scale simulations.
• Fugaku has topped the Top500 list, a supercomputer benchmark index, for two consecutive years.

• A portion of Fugaku’s research is said to be dedicated to COVID-19 related projects.
• It aims to make the device core of Japan’s computing infrastructure.
  • It will help in building a long-lived and healthy society.

 Supercomputer

• The supercomputer is a computer with a high-level computational capacity compared to a general-purpose computer.
• The performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).
• They are expensive and are employed for specialized applications that require immense amounts of mathematical calculations (number crunching).
  •  For example, weather forecasting requires a supercomputer.
  • Other uses of supercomputers scientific simulations, (animated) graphics, fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear energy research, electronic design, and analysis of geological data (e.g. in petrochemical prospecting).
• Japanese supercomputer Fugaku (442 petaflops) and IBM’s Summit (148.8 petaflops) are the two most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Supercomputer in India

• Mihir: Mihir (146th on the list), clubs with Pratyush to generate enough computing power to match PARAM-Siddhi.
• PARAM-Siddhi: It is the second Indian supercomputer to be entered in the top 100 on the Top500 list.
  • The supercomputer was established earlier this year, under the National Supercomputer Mission (NSM) and is going to be installed in the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing’s (C-DAC) unit.

• Pratyush: It is a supercomputer used for weather forecasting at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, ranked 78th on the November edition of the list.

Application of Supercomputing

• Weather Forecasting
• Scientific Research
• Data Mining

Challenges of Supercomputing in India

• Lack of Research & Development in India.
• Lack of Funding.
• Limited manufacturing of electronics used in Supercomputing missions.

Source :TH