A supercomputer capable of at least a billion billion calculations per second will enter service by 2020, head of the school of computing at the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) said Wednesday.

According to the national plan for the next generation of high performance computers, China will develop an exascale computer during the 13th Five-Year-Plan period (2016-2020).

“The government of Tianjin Binhai New Area, NUDT and the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin are working on the project, and we plan to name it Tianhe-3,” said Liao Xiangke, the school head.

In 2010, the country’s first petaflop supercomputer Tianhe-1 capable of at least a million billion calculations per second came into service in the supercomputing center. At present, Tianhe-1 performs various tasks including oil exploration, high-end equipment manufacturing, biological medicine and animation design, and serves nearly 1,000 customers.

The first details of the fully developed Tianhe-2 supercomputer are scheduled to debut in June 19-23, 2016 during the 2016 International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany.

This system is expected to deliver over 100 PFLOPS peak performance, and keep the crown of the world’s fastest (super)computer.

A new 64-core design will enable the system to reach its original performance targets. With the three million new ARM cores inside the Tianhe-2, its estimated Rpeak performance in the Linpack benchmark should exceed 100 PFLOPS.

When Tianhe-2 reach its full deployment of 32,000 Xeons, 32,000 ShenWei processor, and 96,000 Phytium accelerator cards, it could reach a range of 200-300 PFLOPS – if the building can withstand the thermal and power challenges associated with it.

SOURCE- China Daily, 2016 International Supercomputing Conference, VR World

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