Japan's on again off again super back on

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The AP is reporting today that Japan’s next generation big super, which was recently canned, is back on again

Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii and other key Cabinet members agreed Wednesday to allow the science ministry as a special case to earmark up to around 23 billion yen in the fiscal 2010 budget to support projects to develop a next-generation supercomputer.

The agreement came after a number of Japanese scientists including Nobel Prize laureates voiced strong opposition to the Democratic Party of Japan-led government’s move to freeze the projects as part of its efforts to cut wasteful spending.

That’s about $256M USD, but the money isn’t free or guaranteed

Hiroshi Ogushi, a parliamentary secretary for finance, told reporters that the ministry will be allowed to seek up to 22.78 billion yen for the development in exchange for making an additional cut of 5 billion yen to its initial budget requests.

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