In Japan, 23 experts from various scientific fields form the Mission Definition Committee. They report to the director of the Earth Simulator Center with regard to the rules and issues for promoting the Earth Simulation Project including the priority fields, computer resources allocation, annual and medium-range planning, and guidelines for proposal selection.

Mr. Sato told the audience that this report advises a resource allocation of 35% for climate science, 20% for solid earth science, 10% for computer science, 15% for innovative projects from other fields and 20% for the director. The director establishes international collaborations and takes care that the development of background hardware and software tools gets promoted.

During the fiscal year 2002, 40 projects were selected among 73 proposals by the Selection Committee, 17 of which are for climate science, 8 for solid earth science, 4 for computer science and 11 for the innovative project. This project started on July 16, 2002.

Mr. Sato introduced to the audience all activities performed with the Earth Simulator during the first operational year. At the Earth Simulator Center, the AFES, OFES, Global atmospheric circulation, and Global oceanic circulation codes have been developed. The 10km horizontal resolution global runs of AFES were successfully carried out reproducing fairly well the generation and propagation of typhoons and the formation of the Baiu rainy front. The 10km resolution OFES runs have superiorly visualised the meandering Kuroshio, the Gulf stream, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Agulhas rings streaming along the southern coast of the African continent.

A coupled code of the ocean, ice and atmosphere dynamics, which has been recently developed by Dr. Keiko Takahashi of ESC, has demonstrated the seasonal growth and regression of the ice covering the Antarctic and Arctic poles.

Seismic wave propagations in Japanese areas have also been simulated to compare them to the real ones in order to successfully contribute to future disaster relief. Carbon-nano-tube (CNT) and fullerene dynamics have been studied in detail to find the thermal conductivity for 100 nanometer materials and to search for a super-diamond material of CNT.

Mr. Sato confirmed that there are still other innovative results that have been achieved such as for instance biopolymers and rocket engines. These results clearly that the Earth Simulator Project is working according to everyone's satisfaction. In addition, programmes have been requested to optimise the Earth Simulator architecture to up to 30 percent of the current peak performance.

Mr. Sato then expanded on the relevance of holistic simulation. In the recent past, simulations were fragmenting the whole into parts or levels to extract elementary processes and reduce them to idealised problems. The role of the simulation was to reveal the non-linear evolutions of these individual problems governed by the fundamental principles and laws based on the theory of reductionism and to confirm that those principles and laws act in the workings of nature. This turned the role of the simulation into the non-linear solver of individual idealised problems.

According to the speaker, it is this type of non-linear solver which has played a decisive role in the accomplishments of modern Western science based on reductionism. However, as long as simulations are functioning as non-linear solvers, they will not be able to go beyond just supporting the findings from experiments and observations. Computer simulations have the potential to do a lot more and play an active role in addressing unexplored scientific and technological issues.

The Earth Simulator indeed has the capacity to consistently deal with an entire system that evolves with a variety of mutually interacting processes, both microscopically and macroscopically. This is what Mr. Sato defines as "holistic simulation", which is essential to discover the true essence of a non-equilibrium, non-linear and open system, which has been left unexplored by conventional science.

The speaker was digging into philosophy by saying that the concept of reductionism as Descartes' paradigm for Western science in the seventeenth century has now, at the start of the twenty-first century, essentially run its course. Mr. Sato considered it interesting that the anchor for reductionism has been the simulation in its role as non-linear solver in the knowledge that holistic simulations might become a methodology that will rise above the current methodologies of modern science. Mr. Sato believes the Earth Simulator has the power to achieve this.

Descartes' paradigm is based on the idea that nature searches for equilibrium and stability. According to this theory, the conditions in a natural system rarely move away from the equilibrium point or the point of stability. This perturbation theory is a daring explanation for the physical universe, according to the speaker. However, deeper research has shown that nature is an open system through which information, energy, material and flow are always emerging back and forth.

This turns nature into a source of non-equilibrium, instability and as a result, non-linearity, all concepts somewhat forgotten by modern science. In fact, the Earth Simulator was developed just in time to provide scientists with the mighty tool necessary for creating a new paradigm of non-equibirium, non-linearity and openness, as Mr. Sato stated.

New technological developments, such as nuclear fusion reactors, can only take place through expensive trial and error experiments at each stage of the development process. Here, as Mr. Sato believes, holistic simulations can play a substantial role by reducing the costs and the number of tests needed.

The advances in global environmental change simulations will transform into a normal, everyday activity the reliable and accurate predictions about the state of the planet on a more global scale and further into the future. In short, the paradigm will shift from the current linear and simplistic thinking to naturally non-linear complex thinking.

Mr. Sato concluded by stating that the products obtained so far by the Earth Simulator have shed light on the strong potentiality of changing the paradigm of computer simulation. The art of simulation will become a natural and indispensible part of modern human life style.