Japan's new supercomputer is about to be launched, with 530 petaflops of computing power per second to challenge the status of China and the United States

A government-backed supercomputer project is expected to surpass rivals from the United States and China in an international computer speed ranking to be announced this month, reclaiming the top spot for Japan, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.

Fugaku was jointly developed by Fujitsu and RIKEN, and has a theoretical maximum speed of about 530 quadrillion times per second. This is equivalent to 7 billion people in the world performing one calculation per second for more than two years.

That's more than double the 200 petaflops achieved at IBM Summit, which has topped the Top500 ranking of the world's fastest computers for two consecutive years. Fugaku represents Japan's best hope of regaining its lead in supercomputer speed, which has become a two-way race between China and the United States in recent years, with implications for economic and national security potential.

Observers say Fugaku is expected to top the new list, possibly even No. 1. Eight and a half years ago, the K computer, also from Fujitsu, was called the fastest supercomputer.

IBM's Sierra supercomputer ranked second in the top 500 supercomputers announced in November 2019. The third place was the Sunway TaihuLight built by the China Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology Research Center, and the fourth place was the Tianhe-2A built by the National University of Defense Technology of China.

Fugaku has already been deployed experimentally during the coronavirus pandemic to help find drug candidates.