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*****For immediate use March 8, 2002
The World's Fastest Supercomputer System for Resolving Global
Environmental Problems Completed
- The Main System of the Ultra High-Speed Vector Parallel Computation Machine Delivered -
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| "The Earth Simulator" |
TOKYO March 8, 2002 - NEC Corporation (NEC) (NASDAQ: NIPNY) (FTSE: 6701q.l)
today announced the completion of its delivery of the ultra high-speed vector
parallel computing system known as "the Earth Simulator," to the Earth
Simulator Center (ESC, Tetsuya Sato, Director)". The system is slated to
begin operation on March 11, 2002.
The Earth Simulator was developed by the Earth Simulator Research and Development
Center (ESRDC, Kiyoshi Asai, Director), which is a collaborative organization
of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA, Shuichiro Yamanouchi,
President), Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI, Kenichi Murakami, President),
and Japan Marine Science and Technology Center (JAMSTEC, Takuya Hirano, President).
The Earth Simulator system was installed in the simulator building (with floor
space 50m x 65m) at Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences (Yokohama, Kanagawa)
of JAMSTEC. This is the world's fastest supercomputer configured with 640 nodes
(64GFLOPS/node, 5,120 CPUs in total), each of which consists of eight vector processors
(8GFLOPS/CPU), and achieves the peak performance of 40TFLOPS (40 trillion floating-point
operations per second).
The Earth Simulator will create a "virtual planet earth" on the computer
by its capability of processing vast volume of data sent from satellites, buoys
and other worldwide observation point. The system will contribute to analyze and
predict environmental changes on the earth through the simulation of various global
scale environmental phenomena such as global warming, El Nino effect, atmospheric
and marine pollution, torrential rainfall and other complicated environmental
effects. It will also provide an outstanding research tool in explaining terrestrial
phenomena such as tectonics and earthquakes.
NEC has been committed to the project with full-scale efforts since it was
initially selected to develop the basic design in 1997. Since then, NEC has engaged
in a series of developments such as the technology research and development in
1998, detailed design in 1999, the manufacture and implementation of the system
in 2000, leading up to the completion of the main system and start of operation
this year.
NEC is highly honored to be a part of the Earth Simulator project which Japan
can proudly present to the world. By developing leading-edge technologies further,
NEC intends to work on the tuning in the system's operability and the sustained
performance with the maximum efforts for years to come.
About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) (FTSE: 6701q.l) is a leading provider of Internet
solutions, dedicated to meeting the specialized needs of its customers in the
key computer, network and electron device fields through its three market-focused
in-house companies: NEC Solutions, NEC Networks and NEC Electron Devices. NEC
Corporation, with its in-house companies, employs approximately 150,000 people
worldwide and saw net sales of 5,409 billion Yen (approx. US$43 billion) in fiscal
year 2000-2001. For further information, please visit the NEC home page at: http://www.nec.com
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Main features of the Earth Simulator's system
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