The world’s next fastest supercomputer will help boost China’s growing sea power
Ambitious plan for device capable of a billion billion calculations per second will be built as part of project to expand country’s influence across the seas
China is planning to boost its computing power tenfold within a couple of years by building a new generation supercomputer.
The machine will be based on the coast of Shandong province to process the data collected from the world’s oceans, according to scientists briefed on the project.
An Hong, professor of computer science with the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and a member of a committee advising the central government on high performance computer development, said the world’s first exascale computer would have a dedicated mission of helping China’s maritime expansion.
An exascale computer is defined as one that can carry out one billion billion calculations per second. It is not only 10 times faster than Sunway Taihulight – at present the world’s fastest computer which operates from Wuxi, Jiangsu – but equal to the calculation power of all the world’s top 500 super computers combined.
An said the machine could be finished as soon as 2019. Three independent supercomputer manufacturers on the mainland are competing for the contract. They include Sugon, or the Dawning Information Industry, which is owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences; the National University of Defence Technology, which built the Tianhe series supercomputers, and the Sunway team. They have produced blueprints featuring vastly different architectures, according to An.
The authorities are looking to pick a design that not only offers a high performance but will be ready for immediate use once built. The budget for the project is expected to be between one and two billion yuan (US$150 million-US$300 million).
