By Herman Lai, posted Nov 2, 2012 at 9:37 AM, 697 views,

China Is Aiming To Build A 100-Petaflop Supercomputer By 2015

Recent report revealed China’s plan of making a supercomputer “Tianhe-2″ that could run at an extremely high 100-petaflop, which will be five-times faster than “Titan”, the world’s fastest supercomputer at 20 petaflops in U.S. This is not China’s first attempt at building a supercomputer. Back in 2010, China launched “Tianhe-1A“, which is one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers that could run at 4.7 petaflops.

Like the Tianhe-1A, the Tianhe-2 will also be designed by China’s National University of Defense Technology. Tianhe-2 could achieve five times the speed of Titan, but it won’t be sitting in the top spot for long, because China also has other ational programs aiming to produce a supercomputers that could reach 1 exaflop (1,000 petaflops) in 2018. Though, China isn’t the only one aiming to deliver 100-petaflop computing by 2015. The United States, the European Union and Japan all have the similar goal and ambition.

China’s supercomputers are currently built by using U.S. chips and softwares. But this could gradually change as the country invests more in developing its own homegrown technology. China’s supercomputer “Sunway Bluelight MPP” was a clear example of it, which is the first supercomputer based on Chinese microprocessor chips that achieved a quadrillion calculations per second and fast enough to grab a spot on the list of the 20’s most powerful in the world.

Source: ITworld via Engadget