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Japanese editorial excerpts+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) TOKYO, Nov. 22_(Kyodo) _ Selected editorial excerpts from the Japanese press: SUPERCOMPUTER VITAL TO JAPAN'S SCIENTIFIC FUTURE (The Daily Yomiuri as translated from the Yomiuri Shimbun) Is the new administration's stance on science and technology about to be called into question due to its budget measures? In its review of ministerial budget requests for fiscal 2010, which is aimed at cutting wasteful spending, the Government Revitalization Unit has decided to "effectively freeze" a project by the Education, Science and Technology Ministry to develop a next-generation supercomputer. The world's leading supercomputers can make calculations one million times faster than a standard personal computer. The machines are used for simulations in a wide variety of fields. They are indispensable to those who need to conduct tests in fields where practical experiments are nearly impossible to do and they cut the time it takes to carry out research, thereby keeping research costs down. Currently, the United States is leading the race to develop supercomputers that are even better than the world's leading models, which have reached speeds of about 1 quadrillion calculations per second. Japan's next-generation supercomputers aim at improving this calculation performance by the power of one. However, it is not easy to improve performance by the power of one over what are already cutting-edge machines. To that end, it is necessary to develop improved circuitry, including better semiconductors. The private sector cannot take on such a massive task alone. The United States and other countries develop supercomputers with financial backing from their governments. Japan also included about 27 billion yen for this purpose in the fiscal 2010 budget requests. Unless Japan makes an effort to take the lead in supercomputer development, it will not rank with the superpowers in the field. Japan ranked first in the world in terms of supercomputer calculation speed in 2002, but lost the top spot 2-1/2 years later. Today, it languishes in 31st place, behind even China and South Korea. If researchers cannot use cutting-edge supercomputers in Japan, it could lead to a brain drain of capable researchers. Budget requests for other science and technology-related projects also were severely scrutinized. It is natural to want to cut wasteful spending in the budget requests, but we do not want to see a situation emerge in which Japan's science and technology lifeline also is cut. (Nov. 22) (c) 2009 Kyodo News International, Inc. |