INDUSTRY

Japanese electronics giant NEC Corporation, on Wednesday announced the world's fastest supercomputer and added that the model was available to all interested buyers. NEC claims its SX-8 is the most powerful 'vector-type' supercomputer, with a sustainable data processing speed well beyond IBM's recently unveiled BlueGene/L. In September IBM calimed that its Blue Gene/L supercomputer had surpassed NEC's Earth Simulator to become the world's most powerful supercomputer. IBM's Blue Gene/L is capable of a sustained data processing speed of 36.01 teraflops. A terflop is defined as one trillion floating point operations per second. NEC said its newest SX series model has a peak processing speed of 65 teraflops and a sustainable performance of roughly 90 percent that speed or 58.5 teraflops. The NEC and IBM supercomputers are different in structure. NEC says its SX-8, because of its vector architecture, "delivers much higher sustained performance than scalar supercomputers" like IBM's Blue Gene/L. "We have received 100 orders so far," with the first models to be shipped to the UK's national weather forecasting service and the High Performance Computing Center in Stuttgart, Germany, said NEC managing director Tadao Kondo. The Tokyo-based electronics maker aims to sell or rent 700 models in the next three years. The monthly rental fee for the SX-8 is a minimum ¥1.17 million (R67 384) and the purchase price is ¥130 million. Supercomputers are widely used to develop complex products like new airplanes, automobiles and drugs.