Presently, science and technology in Japan is mostly focused and prominent in consumer electronics, robotics and the automotive industry.
Electronics
Japan is well known for its automotive and electronics industries throughout the world, and Japanese electronic products account for a large share in the world market, compared to a majority of other countries.
Japan is one of the leading nations in the fields of scientific research, technology, machinery and medical research with the world's third largest budget for research and development at $130 billion USD, and over 677,731 researchers. Japan has received the most science Nobel prizes in Asia (see List of Nobel laureates by country)
Transportation and robots
Japan has large international corporate conglomerates such as Fuji (which developed the nation's first electronic computer, FUJIC, in 1956) and Sony. Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Sharp, NEC, Epson and Toshiba are among the most well-known electronics companies in the world. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nintendo, and Subaru are also very well known companies in the world.
Some of Japan's more important technological contributions are found in the fields of electronics, machinery, robotics, optics, chemicals, semiconductors and metals. Japan leads the world in robotics, possessing more than half (402,200 of 742,500) of the world's industrial robots used for manufacturing.
It also produced QRIO, ASIMO, and Aibo. Japan is also home to six of the world's fifteen largest automobile manufacturers and seven of the world's twenty largest semiconductor sales leaders. Japan is also considered to have one of the most advanced trains, notably the Shinkansen and maglev trains. In 2003, the maglev MLX01 reached 581 km/h. This is the fastest record achieved by a maglev as well as a fastest train, slightly beating France's TGV attempt in 2007 (by about 7 km/h).
Japanese Computer Is World's Fastest, As U.S. Falls Back
SAN FRANCISCO, April 19— A Japanese laboratory has built the world's fastest computer, a machine so powerful that it matches the raw processing power of the 20 fastest American computers combined and far outstrips the previous leader, an I.B.M.-built machine.
The achievement, which was reported today by an American scientist who tracks the performance of the world's most powerful computers, is evidence that a technology race that most American engineers thought they were winning handily is far from over. American companies have built the fastest computers for most of the last decade.
The accomplishment is also a vivid statement of contrasting scientific and technology priorities in the United States and Japan. The Japanese machine was built to analyze climate change, including global warming, as well as weather and earthquake patterns. By contrast, the United States has predominantly focused its efforts on building powerful computers for simulating weapons, while its efforts have lagged in scientific areas like climate modeling.
For some American computer scientists, the arrival of the Japanese supercomputer evokes the type of alarm raised by the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite in 1957.
''In some sense we have a Computenik on our hands,'' said Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who reported the achievement today. For many years he has maintained an authoritative list of the world's 500 fastest computers.
Several United States computer scientists said the Japanese machine reflected differences in style and commitment that suggest that United States research and spending efforts have grown complacent in recent years. For now, the new computer will be used only for climate research, and American scientists have already begun preparing to move some of their climate simulation research to run on the Japanese machine.
''The Japanese clearly have a level of will that we haven't achieved,'' said Thomas Sterling, a supercomputer designer at the California Institute of Technology. ''These guys are blowing us out of the water, and we need to sit up and take notice.''
The new Japanese supercomputer will have both scientific and practical applications. It will be used for advanced modeling of theories about global warming and climate change, and it will be able to predict short-term weather patterns.
Advances in computer speed today routinely extend computer simulation into all areas of science and engineering as complex calculations take an increasingly shorter time. Because increases in computing power tend to have exponential results, a problem that could take years for even the fastest computers today might be finished in hours on the new Japanese computer.
The ability to track the path of a typhoon, for example, is of immediate relevance to the island nation of Japan. Improved prediction made possible by a more powerful computer might save lives and property.
Computer simulation has become a standard tool in both science and modern design of products ranging from drugs to bicycles. Computers that are more powerful make possible simulations that are more accurate and can reduce cost and increase efficiency. At one time, for example, computers were capable of computing the flow of air over a single airplane wing but can now cover the entire aircraft.
The new Japanese supercomputer was financed by the Japanese government and has been installed at the Earth Simulator Research and Development Center in Yokohama, west of Tokyo. The Japanese government spent $350 million to $400 million developing the system over the last five years, according to Dr. Akira Sekino, president and chief executive of HNSX Supercomputers, a unit of the NEC Corporation based in Littleton, Colo.
The new computer was formally dedicated last month, and the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center said yesterday that the machine had reached more than 87 percent of its theoretical peak speed.
''This is a huge achievement for the Japanese,'' Dr. Sekino said.
NEC sells a scaled-down version of the new supercomputer. Several United States universities and government agencies have tried to buy the machines over the last decade for purposes like aircraft simulation, seismic studies and molecular modeling. But sales have been thwarted by resistance from the Commerce Department and members of Congress, who complained that NEC was ''dumping'' the machines, or selling them below cost. Last year Cray Inc., a United States maker of supercomputers, entered into a marketing agreement to sell the machines in the United States, but no sales have been announced.
The NEC supercomputers are based on vector processing, a way of using specialized hardware to solve complex calculations that was pioneered by the American supercomputer designer Seymour Cray. The concept has generally fallen out of favor in the United States in recent years.
Assembled from 640 specialized nodes that are in turn composed of 5,104 processors made by NEC, the new Japanese supercomputer occupies the space of four tennis courts and has achieved a computing speed of 35.6 trillion mathematical operations a second. The processors are linked in a way that allows extremely efficient operation compared with the previously fastest ''massively parallel'' computers, which are based on standard parts rather than custom-made chips.
The earth simulator project is intended to create a ''virtual earth'' on an NEC supercomputer to show what the world will look like under various climate conditions by means of advanced numerical simulation. The system is intended to serve as a research platform for international teams of researchers, and United States scientists are planning to participate in new projects made possible by the more powerful computer.
By comparison, the fastest American supercomputer, which until now held the world computing speed record, is the ASCI White Pacific computer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Based on I.B.M. processors, it has achieved a top speed of 7 trillion math operations a second.
Faster machines are being designed at government-financed labs in Livermore, Pittsburgh and Los Alamos, N.M., but they are far from operational.
The Japanese supercomputer underscores a continuing debate within the computer design community. One camp has argued for building massively parallel supercomputers by chaining together thousands of off-the-shelf microprocessors. That philosophy has come to dominate designs in the United States in recent years. A second camp has pushed for computers made from specialized processors dedicated to solving a particular class of problem.
The vector processors used in the Japanese machine are an example of the second approach, and they have long been used with great success for scientific problems ranging from weather prediction to bomb design.
Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said they were planning to work with the Japanese earth simulation center to convert United States weather modeling codes to work with the new computer.
''It's potentially quite significant for climate studies,'' said Dr. Tim Kalleen, a space scientist who is director of the American climate research center. He said his researchers were discussing with their Japanese counterparts the technical details needed to make sure the advanced American programs will run on the Japanese machine.
Photo: The new Japanese supercomputer, the world's fastest, was financed by the Japanese government and has been installed at the Earth Simulator Research and Development Center in Yokohama. (pg. C14) Chart: ''The Fastest Supercomputers'' Claim to the world's fastest supercomputer has passed back and forth between American and Japanese manufacturers over the last decade. YEAR: 2002 FASTEST COMPUTER: NEC Earth Simulator NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 5,104 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 35,600 YEAR: 2001 FASTEST COMPUTER: I.B.M. ASCI White-Pacific MICRO-PROCESSORS, IF USED: I.B.M. SP Power 3 NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 7,424 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 7,226 YEAR: 2000 FASTEST COMPUTER: I.B.M. ASCI White-Pacific MICRO-PROCESSORS, IF USED: I.B.M. SP Power 3 NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 7,424 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 4,938 YEAR: 1999 FASTEST COMPUTER: Intel ASCI Red MICRO-PROCESSORS, IF USED: Intel Pentium II Xeon NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 9,632 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 2,379 YEAR: 1998 FASTEST COMPUTER: I.B.M. ASCI Blue-Pacific MICRO-PROCESSORS, IF USED: I.B.M. SP 604E NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 5,808 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 2,144 YEAR: 1997 FASTEST COMPUTER: Intel ASCI Option Red MICRO-PROCESSORS, IF USED: 200 MHz Pentium Pro NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 9,152 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 1,338 YEAR: 1996 FASTEST COMPUTER: Hitachi CP-PACS MICRO-PROCESSORS, IF USED: NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 2,048 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 368 YEAR: 1995 FASTEST COMPUTER: Intel Paragon XP/S MP NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 6,768 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 281 YEAR: 1994 FASTEST COMPUTER: Intel Paragon XP/S MP NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 6,768 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 281 YEAR: 1993 FASTEST COMPUTER: Fujitsu NWT NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 140 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 124 YEAR: 1992 FASTEST COMPUTER: NEC SX-3/44 NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 4 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 20 YEAR: 1991 FASTEST COMPUTER: Fujitsu VP2600/10 NUMBER OF PROCESSORS: 1 SPEED IN GIGAFLOPS*: 4 *Billions of mathematical operations per second (Source: Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee)
No comments:
Post a Comment