The Japanese Supercomputer

The institution, which is publicly funded, has already completed the basic design and plans to have the equipment operational this year at its Advanced Computing Sciences Center in the city of Kobe, where the famous "supercomputer K" (the fastest in Japan) is also housed, the economic newspaper Nikkei reported today. The machine will be capable of generating, in three dimensions, modifications in protein structures in a single day, about 100 times faster than the "supercomputer K", which despite being more powerful has much less specialized functions. Hitachi has contributed to the development of the technology for the project, which has an estimated cost of about 800 million yen (7.55 million dollars or 5.6 million euros). The speed at which researchers are able to generate three-dimensional models of protein structures and the changes that occur in them due to the disease are key nowadays for the development of new therapies. Since biotechnology plays an increasingly essential role in the treatment of diseases such as cancer and the use of supercomputers is increasingly common among large pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the U.S., the new project can give an important competitive boost to the Japanese firms and universities that use it