China to Develop Exascale Prototype in 2017

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Sunway TaihuLight Supercomputer in Wuxi, China

The Xinhua news agency reports that China is planning to develop a prototype exascale supercomputer by the end of 2017.

“A complete computing system of the exascale supercomputer and its applications can only be expected in 2020, and will be 200 times more powerful than the country’s first petaflop computer Tianhe-1, recognized as the world’s fastest in 2010,” said Zhang Ting, application engineer with the Tianjin-based National Supercomputer Center, when attending the sixth session of the 16th Tianjin Municipal People’s Congress Tuesday.

Zhang said that using the exascale computer for cloud computing and big data applications, China could spur ahead with many key innovation and high-tech programs.

In June 2016, China revealed its fastest new supercomputer — the Sunway TaihuLight — with a peak performance of 124.5 petaflops, the world’s first system to exceed 100 petaflops.

China has been steadily building its supercomputing capacity, and independently developed all key technology including microprocessors.

Zhang said the next-generation exascale computer will not only lead in calculation speed, but also in data transmission efficiency.

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Comments

  1. Pretty sure the Fujitsu ARM machine will be the first actually useful and efficient exascale supercomputer. The almost 6 year old K is ahead of the Taihu Light, and every other supercomputer in the world, in the HPCG and Graph500 with the #1 position for both.

    Those benchmarks are more relevant to real world performance than HPL and the K, FX10 and the much more advanced FX100 do much better than most architectures, including the Taihu Light and Tianhe.