Fastest computers in US and Japan
Historically massive parallel architectures
Magnetic fusion experiments at Livermore lab using lots of SCs
- Octopus network
- Lots of partial differential equations
CRAY is one of the fastest commercially available
Nuclear weapon design and analysis at Livermore
Japan’s supercomputers heralded a new generation of speed and sophistication
Vectorized compilers had to be built
- Different than scalar computation
- Algorithms needed to be redesigned

Commercial applications?
- Petroleum ; not clear what the goal is yet, but lots of simulations + exploration
- Automobile industry; high-dimension simulations ; profitability analysis
Grace Hopper nanosecond
Speed of light is the fundamental limitation on computing

🇯🇵 JAPAN

Hitachi was building SCs
- Part of public/private partnership to produce 10X faster super computer
“Science City” 60 miles north of Tokyo
Very cold chip environments required
Bit of an arms race mentality
- Fujitsu compiler looked really good, to Livermore
Defense / dominance perspective
There’s material risk to losing that dominance in America
- Not as many visible super computer companies in America as you’d think