It just keeps on getting bigger and better. Early this March, the Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences unveiled Japan's Earth Simulator 2 (ES2) supercomputer to the public.
This huge giant of a number cruncher will be used to model global warming, ocean activity and other global phenomena like climate change among others.
Just what is being achieved by and the future potential of the ES2 can be readily observed at the Japan agency for Marine-Earth and Technology - Earth Simulator Center.
solid earth simulation group atmosphere and ocean simulation group
The old Earth Simulator consisted of 640 linked nodes, as opposed to 160 for ES2. The new machine has a theoretical top computing capacity of 131 teraflops, or 131 trillion calculations per second -- 3.2 times more than its predecessor. Even with all that power at its disposal, It consumes 20 to 30 percent less electricity.
The old Earth Simulator was the world fastest computer for 2 1/2 years after it was switched on in 2002. As of last November it was ranked 73rd, and fifth in Japan. The upgrades are expected to make it the fastest in Japan, and about the 18th fastest in the world.
I'm sure that when they start full scale operations from April more and more golden nuggets of knowledge will be revealed for the benefit of mankind and mother Earth.
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