Last week a research group from RIKEN, the University of Tsukuba, the University of Tokyo, and Fujitsu Limited announced that research results obtained using the “K computer” were awarded the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Peak-Performance at SC11.
The award-winning results, presented at SC11, revealed the electron states of silicon nanowires, which have attracted attention as a core material for next-generation semiconductors. To verify the computational performance of the K computer, quantum-mechanical computations were performed on the electron states of a nanowire with approximately 100,000 atoms (20 nanometers in diameter and 6 nanometers long), close to the actual size of the materials, and achieved execution performance of 3.08 petaflops (representing execution efficiency of 43.6%). The results of the detailed calculations on the electron states of silicon nanowires, comprised of 10,000 to 40,000 atoms, clarified that electron transport characteristics will change depending on the cross-sectional shape of the nanowire.
This is the first time that a research group from Japan has won the Gordon Bell Prize for Peak-Performance since 2004. Read the Full Story.
