Episode Details

Recent winner of the Purple Ribbon Medal, one of Japan’s highest honors, Prof. Satoshi Matsuoka, director of the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) and professor of computer science at Tokyo Institute of Technology, joins us in a super fun conversation that covers a wide range of topics (time stamps inside parenthesis).

At RIKEN, Prof. Matsuoka oversaw the development and launch of the Fugaku supercomputer, currently holding the number 1 spot on the TOP500 list. As the list is about to get updated, next week, there is an expectation that the Frontier supercomputer at ORNL (which we covered in a previous episode) will claim the number 1 spot but Fugaku will likely retain its lead in some benchmarks. Previously, he was lead developer of another well-know supercomputer, TSUBAMI, the most powerful supercomputer in Japan at the time.

Here are the topics and the time-stamp in the podcast when they are discussed:

• (start) The Purple Ribbon Medal of Honor
• (minute 2:15) The role of Japan in supercomputing
• (3:45) TOP500 and ORNL’s Exascale system
• (5:00) Fugaku and Arm
• (8:00) Why not SPARC
• (11:30) The balance and beuty of Fugaku and its predecessor the K-Computer
• (15:15) Notable applications of Fugaku, including Covid research
• (25:00) Future of supercomputing and what’s next after Fugaku
• (31:45) FPGA and CGRA
• (36:00) Quantum Computing
• (40:30)  Nintendo days and working with the late great Iwata-san
• (48:30) Pursuit of perfection, with a mention of the movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Enjoy!

OrionX Editorial Te

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