Exclusive | China plans multibillion-dollar investment to knock US from top spot in fastest supercomputer ranking
- China and the US dominate when it comes to the world’s fastest supercomputers, owning 45.4 per cent and 21.8 per cent of the top systems globally respectively
- Multibillion-dollar investment aimed at upgrading three existing supercomputer labs to the latest exascale computing technology over three-year period
China is planning a multibillion-dollar investment to upgrade its supercomputer infrastructure to regain leadership after the US took top spot for the fastest supercomputer in 2018, ending China’s five-year dominance, according to people familiar with the matter.
China is aiming for its newest Shuguang supercomputers to operate at about 50 per cent faster than the current best US machines, which assuming all goes to plan should help China wrest the title back from the US in this year’s rankings of the world’s fastest machines, according to people, who asked not to be named discussing private information.
These next-generation Chinese supercomputers will be delivered to the computer network information Centre of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing for the global Top500 rankings of the world’s fastest computers, the people said.
The ability to produce state-of-the-art supercomputers is an important metric of any nation’s technical prowess as they are widely deployed for tasks ranging from weather predictions and modelling ocean currents to energy technology and simulating nuclear explosions. Demand for supercomputing in commercial applications is also on the rise, driven by developments in artificial intelligence.
In 2015, US President Barack Obama signed an executive order to authorise the creation of the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) to accelerate the development of technologies for exascale supercomputers and to fund research into post-semiconductor-based computing.
