The Mainichi Daily News, the English-language news site of Japan’s Mainichi Newspapers, is reporting today that the new earth simulator is available for gazing at
Japan’s Earth Simulator 2 (ES2) supercomputer has been unveiled to the public, following a set of upgrades that have more than tripled the speed of the original Earth Simulator.
…The old Earth Simulator consisted of 640 linked nodes, but newer technology has whittled that figure down to 160. ES2 has a theoretical top computing capacity of 131 teraflops, or 131 trillion calculations per second — 3.2 times more than its predecessor. It consumes 20 to 30 percent less electricity, and the computer’s floor space has been halved to 650 square meters.
That peak capability puts it far away from number one on the November 2008 list, though. In fact, the machine isn’t even the fastest in Asia any more. Things change.
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