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10,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second


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Paying a visit to the fastest computer on earth

 

By TOMOKO OTAKE

Staff writer

 

In today's ever-more digitalized world, we all have a tale or two to share about how personal computers have let us down: like how they refused to let us run different programs at the same time or how the data was so heavy that the damned device kept us on hold forever before conducting even the most trivial operation.

 

 

Well, there is one machine in the world — and it's in Japan — that is absolutely free of such concerns, being the fastest computer on Earth and capable of handling a mind-boggling number of tasks in far less than the blink of an eye.

 

The K computer — which will be available for shared use by researchers in November — is named after the Japanese numerical unit 京 (kei), meaning 10 quadrillion, or 10,000 trillion. By achieving the targeted 10 petaflops, a measure of computer performance equaling 10 quadrillion calculations — or floating-point operations, to be precise — per second, K lived up to its name in November.

 

If humans were to perform the same number of calculations as K does in a second, it would take the world's entire population of 7 billion people — each tackling one problem per second — 17 consecutive days.

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120212x1.html

 

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