The Fugaku supercomputer commissioned by the Japanese Riken Institute is immediately the fastest in the world. It is the first time that a system with ARM processors is at the top of the list.

The Fugaku supercomputer is built with A64FX processors from Fujitsu and has 7.3 million ARM cores on board.

This makes it 512 petaflops. That speed immediately puts the computer at the top of the top 500 of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. The system thereby pushes the American Summit to the throne.

That supercomputer, built from IBM Power9 CPUs with Nvidia GV100 accelerators, achieves up to 200 petaflops. The Fugaku computer consumes three times as much power as the Summit.

The purpose of the supercomputer Japan is to do calculations for research, including COVID-19. The system was initially planned to be inaugurated in 2021, but that date has been brought forward due to the corona crisis.

It is the first time that an ARM system is at the top of the list. Most supercomputers are now built with x86 microprocessors based on Intel architecture.

Some supercomputers scheduled for next year, which are even faster than Fugaku, also use that Intel system. The ARM architecture is currently experiencing a boom in popularity, now that Apple has also decided to base its chips on it.