The Earth Simulator Project will create a "virtual earth" on a supercomputer to show what the world will look like in the future by means of advanced numerical simulation technology.

The NEC Earth Simulator, as large as four tennis courts, works at a speed of 35,600 gigaflops. A gigaflop equals a billion mathematical operations per second. The top-ranked computer on the list's November 2001 edition, IBM's ASCI White, runs at a speed of 7,226 gigaflops.