The list of governmental Research Lab employing large supercomputers is quite impressive and is extending itself further thanks to the new governmental initiative for supercomputer deployment. As already mentioned, the National Aerospace Laboratory is the un-contested leader of the TOP500 list with its 140-processor ``Numeric Wind Tunnel''. NAL is also equipped with one VP-2600 and is about to receive a second one. It has also deviated slightly from its Fujitsu-only past by acquiring a Cray Y/M92 and an Intel XP/S25. The enormous computing capacity installed in this Lab can be seen as commensurate to Japan's ambitions in space exploration in the future.
JEARI, the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, operates two VP-2600 systems as well as one NEC SX-3/41R. This institute, which is linked to Japan's peaceful nuclear reactor program, is blessed with a computing capacity in correspondence with the importance of its mission. In the same context should be mentioned the two VP-2600 computers installed in at the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation which is still slated to get a Cray T3D system.
Several of the Japanese Research Labs, operate relative large NEC supercomputers. The National Institute of Fusion Science employs a SX-3/24R in its research and The National Institute for Environmental Studies employs a SX-3/14. The National Institute for Molecular Science in Okazaki has just replaced a Hitachi S-820 with a SX-3R/34R. The Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute In the Kansai Science City has taken a leading role in the deployment of parallel computing technology. It acquired a CM/2 in 1990 for use in its Auditory and Visual Perception Research Lab. The Institute has become one of the leaders in deploying Massively Parallel systems in Japan due to its huge needs for s development and execution of parallel algorithms linked to speech recognition, visualisation and other related human-oriented interface systems. It has more recently added a CM-5/64 and a KSR-1/96. The Institute of Space and Astronomical Science that has been using a VP-200E since 1988 now enjoys a 7-processor VPP500. A 10- processor VPP500 was installed at the Communications Research Lab in Tokyo this year. A Hitachi S-820 system in the National Laboratory for High-Energy Physics (KEK) in Tsukuba is about to be replaced by a VPP500 with 80 processors. The vector processing capacity is in high demand due to the computational requirements of the theoretical physicists.
Quite an interesting deviation from Japan's traditional faithfulness to domestic suppliers is seen in the list of computers in use in the Japanese 6th generation computer project, now called the Real World Computing Project. RWCP has equipped itself with a 64-processor CM-5 as well as a 66-processor XP/S5 from Intel that will be used for assisting the construction of a large parallel processing system specially designed for this project