Superior Performance

Superior Performance

1991 3 March 7 Superior Performance (327) A report with a New York dateline, reproduced in the Times of India of April 13,1989, (Section 2, page 4) and titled ‘Japan’s Bid to Excel the US in Supercomputers’ states that the dominance of the US in the field of supercomputers – hitherto regarded as unassailable – is now seriously in doubt. According to the analysts of an American corporation, who drew up this report on the basis of an in-depth survey, a supercomputer made by Japan was to come to the market in 1990 which would be the fastest-working machine in the world.

Now on the market, this computer, named by the Japanese S.X-X, works so fast that it can perform 20 billion operations of scientific calculations in one second, which is 25 per cent faster than the most sophisticated American computer. Besides its superior performance, its other great advantage is that it is relatively less expensive.

The importance of this supercomputer is not limited only to scientific research, oil exploration, weather forecasts, etc., but has also a considerable bearing on national security, it being used extensively in the production of nuclear weapons.

The latest Japanese computers have ushered the world into a new industrial age. The present computers, which were once ‘the latest’ have now become ‘traditional’, ‘conventional’, or simply ‘out-of-date’. One of the more important aspects of Japan’s development of computers is that it has placed it in a position of superiority even in the military field.

Although America destroyed Japan in 1945 by using the atom bomb, it could not take away Japan’s potential; the Japanese were so successful in their natural reconstruction that the whole course of their history was changed within a mere 45 years. The supercomputer of the Japanese has, therefore, proved more powerful than the super bomb of the Americans. Destruction, no matter how massive, never puts an end to opportunities for construction. And the power of construction far exceeds that of destruction. Of that there can be no doubt.