China starts developing new-era exascale supercomputer

Chinese scientists are developing a sample machine that will play a part in the development of a new era supercomputer capable of a quintillion calculations per second, official media reported today.
The National Supercomputer Centre in Tianjin is developing the exascale supercomputer with the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT), Meng Xiangfei, assistant director of the centre said.
The aim is to make the computer, which will be capable of a quintillion calculations per second, by 2020, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
It will be 200 times faster than China's Tianhe-1 supercomputer, and even faster than the most powerful supercomputers in the world, he said.

China's Sunway Taihu Light is the world's fastest system, capable of 93 quadrillion calculations per second, according to an announcement at the 2016 International Supercomputing Conference, Germany.
This new project will expand on existing theories and applications of the exascale system's hardware and software.

The sample machine will hopefully be ready by early 2018, Meng said.
The new era computing system will mark a huge advancement in terms of intensity of calculation, capacity of single chips and the rate of data transmission, he said.
In 2010, the country's first petaflop supercomputer, Tianhe-1, which is capable of at least a million-billion calculations per second, was unveiled to the world.

At present, Tianhe-1 supports various tasks including oil exploration, high-end equipment manufacturing, biological medicine and animation design, and serves nearly 1,000 customers.