What Is the World's Most Expensive Computer
The Fugaku supercomputer, developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu in Japan, is widely recognized as the world's most expensive computer. Its total development and infrastructure cost exceeded 1.3 billion dollars, making it the priciest computing system ever built. This system was designed for advanced scientific research, including climate modeling, drug discovery, and materials science.
Fugaku achieved the top spot on the TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers in June 2020, and it has maintained a leading position in performance rankings since then. Its architecture uses over 7.6 million ARM-based A64FX processors, delivering unprecedented computational power for a single system. The project was funded by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, with RIKEN managing the installation at the Kobe Center for Computational Science.
Key Specifications and Performance of the Most Expensive Computer
Fugaku's performance is measured at over 442 petaflops on the LINPACK benchmark, a standard metric for supercomputing speed. The system occupies over 4,800 racks and consumes approximately 30 megawatts of power, reflecting the immense energy demands of high-end computing. Its design prioritizes both speed and energy efficiency, using a proprietary Tofu interconnect D network to link processors.
One of the defining features of this computer is its full ARM-based architecture, which was a first for a top-ranked supercomputer. This choice allowed RIKEN and Fujitsu to optimize the system for specific workloads, such as artificial intelligence and large-scale simulations. The system also features a high-speed storage capacity of over 3.8 petabytes of main memory, enabling real-time processing of massive datasets.
Who Built the Most Expensive Computer and Why
RIKEN, a leading Japanese research institute, led the development of Fugaku, with Fujitsu serving as the primary hardware and systems integrator. The project began in 2014 as part of a national initiative to strengthen Japan's competitive edge in supercomputing and high-performance computing research. The system was officially inaugurated in March 2021, though it began full operations earlier.
The primary purpose of Fugaku is to support large-scale scientific and industrial applications, from pandemic response modeling to next-generation semiconductor design. It has been used by researchers globally through the HAPC (High-Performance Computing) infrastructure, with access managed by the RIKEN Center for Computational Science. For more details on its technical architecture, you can refer to the official RIKEN Fugaku page here, and for broader context on supercomputing costs, the TOP500 project provides detailed rankings here.