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The Earth Simulator Computer (ESC) is a supercomputer at the Earth
Simulator Center in Kanazawa, Yokohama-shi, Japan. The computer is capable
of 35.6 trillion calculations per second. The system was developed by NASDA,
JAERI, and JAMSTEC from 1997 for climate simulation. Construction started in
October 1999 and was completed by February 2002, the site officially opened
on March 11, 2002. The project cost 7.2 billion yen.
Built by NEC the ESC is based on their SX-6 architecture. It consists of
640 nodes with eight vector processors and 16 gigabyte of computer memory at
each node, for a total of 5120 processors and 10 terabyte of memory. Two
nodes are installed per 1 meter x 1.4 meter x 2 meter cabinet, each cabinet
consumes 20 KVA of power. The system has 700 terabyte of disk storage (450
for the system and 250 for the users) and 1.6 Petabyte of mass storage in
tape drives. The ESC is almost five times faster than IBM ASCI White and
more powerful than the next five fastest machines combined (as of 2002).
It is widely believed that the ESC was built for simulating nuclear
weapon explosions (what ASCI White is used for). Japan denies this claim and
asserts that they have no intentions of developing nuclear weapons.
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