The article explains why you'd want this floating point monster at the bottom.

Here's the technical reason:

"The AI boom has left a bit of a blind spot for applications where high precision and result accuracy are paramount. In simulations for example, floating point error can compound over multiple iterations. Higher precision data types like FP64 can help reduce that error, and PEZY’s SC4S targets those applications."

And here's a summary of sovereignty reasons:

"At a higher level, efforts like PEZY-SC4s and Fujitsu’s A64FX show a curious pattern where Japan maintains domestic hardware architecture development capabilities. It’s contrasts with many other countries that still build their own supercomputers, but rely on chips designed in the US by companies like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. From the perspective of those countries, it’s undoubtedly cheaper and less risky to rely on the US’s technological base to create the chips they need. But Japan’s approach has merits too. They can design chips tightly targeted to their needs, like energy efficient FP64 compute. It also leads to more unique designs"

Related discussion which was really interesting:

Why is Japan still investing in custom floating point accelerators? (nextplatform.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45141907

232 points by rbanffy 2 days ago | 88 comments