Supercomputer to seek Covid-19 cure

The world’s fastest supercomputer, Japan’s $1.2 billion Fugaku, is to use its enormous power to try to identify treatments for Covid-19

1 Central Processing Unit (CPU): Fujitsu 48-core A64FX (1 node)

2 Communication Management Unit (CMU): Houses 2 x CPU (2 nodes)

3 Bunch of Blades (BoB): 8 x CMU (16 nodes)

4 Shelf: 3 x BoB (48 nodes)

5 Rack: 8 x Shelf (384 nodes)

6 Computer room: 3,000m2 (50m x 60m)

System: 432 x Rack (158,976 nodes – comprising 396 racks of 384 nodes, plus 36 racks of 192 nodes)

Performance: 415.53 petaflops (415.53 quadrillion computations per second, written in numerals as: 415,530,000,000,000,000)

7 Computer building
Research building
Chillers: Cold water pumped around nodes

Jun 22, 2020: Top500 declares Fugaku world’s fastest supercomputer – 2.8 times faster than previous record holder, IBM’s Summit

JAPAN
Kobe 
Tokyo 
Google Maps


Despite being unfinished, Fugaku is already studying how respiratory droplets travel inside trains with open carriage windows. When completed in 2021, it will try to identify potential drug treatments for Covid-19


Sources: Top500, BBC, The Guardian, RIKEN Center for Computational Science 
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