Developers of a Japanese supercomputer that has been named the world's fastest said Tuesday they will continue to sharpen its performance to make sure it is always at the forefront of new research frontiers.

"We will continue our efforts to draw its performance to the maximum level," Hiroshi Matsumoto, president of the government-sponsored Riken research institute, told a press conference in Kobe, where the supercomputer Fugaku is installed.

Fugaku took top honors in a twice-yearly ranking released Monday by the U.S.-European TOP500 project, after performing over 415 quadrillion computations per second, around 2.8 times faster than previous record-holder Summit system developed by the U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

(Hiroshi Matsumoto (C), president of Japan's state-backed Riken research institute, attends a press conference in Kobe on June 23, 2020, after new supercomputer Fugaku, jointly developed with the institute's Center for Computational Science and Fujitsu Ltd., was recognized as having the fastest computing speed in the world)

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Satoshi Matsuoka, the institute's computational science center director, expects Fugaku to be the world's biggest "foundation" of artificial intelligence.

"We will put our energy into presenting achievements, which can only be attained with Fugaku, including new solar cells and pharmaceutical products, to the people," Matsuoka added.

Speaking online, Takahito Tokita, president of Fujitsu Ltd., Riken's partner in developing the supercomputer, said the No. 1 title "demonstrated the strength of Japan's technology and manufacturing to the world."

He said the company wants to contribute to the "realization of a sustainable society" by ensuring the proper maintenance of the supercomputer.

Fugaku, another name for Mt. Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan, also became the world's first supercomputer to top the rankings in four categories. The three others are measuring performance in computational methods for industrial use, artificial intelligence application and big data analytics.

Fugaku is expected to be fully operational in the business year starting April 2021. Currently, it is being operated on a trial basis for research related to the novel coronavirus.