Fujitsu's Arm-Powered Supercomputer Beats US, China to Take World Speed Crown

Vlad Savov (Bloomberg) -- A supercomputer developed by Fujitsu Ltd. and Japan’s Riken research institute was ranked the world’s fastest in an independent survey, beating out U.S. and Chinese rivals.

Built using technology from SoftBank Group Corp.’s Arm Ltd., the Fugaku cluster has more than 150,000 processors and roughly 2.8 times the performance of the second-fastest supercomputer, according to TOP500, a research organization that compiles the rankings twice a year. It marks the first time that a Japanese supercomputer has led the ranking since Fujitsu’s K computer took the crown in 2011, the company said. It also boosts Arm’s claims that it can compete with the likes of Intel Corp. in high-performance computing.

The new supercomputer is installed at the Riken Center for Computational Science in Kobe and will begin full operation in 2021. It will contribute to research in areas from drug discovery to weather forecasting and help shape policy decisions.

Arm processors power most of the world’s smartphones and Apple Inc. just announced a transition to building its Mac computers around the technology.