China plans to break its record for making in 2010 Tianhe-1A, the fastest computing system in the world. By 2017 or 2018, the Asian giant will release a prototype of an exascale computer.
To be developed by the country’s National Supercomputer Center, the prototype would be capable of making a minimum of 1 billion calculations per second, revealed Meng Xiangfei, head of the center’s applications department. It would be 1,000 times more powerful than Tianhe-1A.
Actually, Tianhe-2 had already broken the record of Tianhe-1A which had performed more than 1,400 computing tasks and serves about 1,000 users daily. Meng said a more powerful computer is needed because Tianhe-1A’s capacity is already stretched as users utilize it for management of oil exploration data, animation and video effects, processing of biomedical data and production of high-end equipment, reported Global Times.
The planned supercomputer would be at least 30 times faster than the computing power of the fastest computers currently. It would likely be a race between China and the U.S. which country would be able to build one first after U.S. President Barack Obama signed in July 2015 an executive order that would speed up supercomputing research in the United States, reported TechTimes.
Tianhe-2 is the current record-holder and has held the fastest supercomputer record in the world for the sixth straight year. China also owns 109 of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.