China is going to present the world's first supercomputer exaflop level

If you have never heard of exaflop computers, unofficially called "super supercomputers," it's no surprise, because they do not yet exist. However, this year everything can change. China announced that the creation of the first world of the prototype ex-perfume supercomputer will be completed in the coming months. If the system works as indicated in the plan, it will become the fastest supercomputer in the world, capable of producing 1 quintillion calculations per second.

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications of China announced this week that the completion of the prototype is likely to occur much earlier than planned - in 2017, and not in 2018, as it was in the original plans. After that, it will take another couple of years to turn the prototype into a fully functional model, but if everything works out, then the expectations will be worth it.

"The full completion of the computer system of a supercomputer exaflop level and its applications is expected in 2020. As a result, it will be 200 times more powerful than the first supercomputer of the country - Tianhe-1, - which was recognized as the fastest supercomputer in the world in 2010, "Zan Tin from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications of China told the local Xinhua News Agency.

As you understand, China did not stop at Tianhe-1, and eventually Tianhe-2 was established in the country, which received the title of the most powerful computer in the world in 2015, allowing the Chinese supercomputer to head the list of the fastest supercomputers in the sixth time world Top500.

Last year, China introduced the world's most powerful supercomputer - Sunway TaihuLight. Its peak performance is 124.5 petaflops, which makes it the world's first computer system that has overcome the performance limit of 100 petaflops.

To make it easier for you to understand how fast the new exaflopic supercomputer will be, let's compare: the supercomputer Sunway TaihuLight, the world's most powerful supercomputer, is capable of performing quadrillion operations of calculations every second (1 quadrillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000). When it comes to quadrillion, we use the prefix "peta" to denote the values, and therefore the level of computer performance in this case is measured in petaflops.

The prototype of the Chinese supercomputer "Tianhe-3", which is currently under development, will be able to perform at least 1 quintillion calculations per second (or 1 000 000 000 000 000 000). And this is a new level. To be clearer: as a rule, quintillions are used only in mathematical calculations of the mass of the Earth (in tons) or, for example, in calculating the number of molecules in the human brain.

It should be noted that China is not the only country currently engaged in the creation of an exaflop level supercomputer. In the United States, similar work is being done, although it is not until 2023 that it is completed. According to the US Department of Energy, his project of a supercomputer exaflop level can make a real revolution in the industry.

"With the ability to produce 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second, ex-SF supercomputers will be able to very quickly analyze giant data sets and more realistically create computer models of environments, processes and relationships behind the majority of the fundamental forces of the universe," the website of the Department of Energy USA.

"Exaflops supercomputers will be able to more realistically simulate the processes used in precision medicine, climate studies, additive production, bioenergy, the relationship between energies and liquid substances, to discover new physical properties of materials, in design, research of the fundamental forces of the universe and much more." .

At the moment, two supercomputers from China are located at the top of the list of the most productive supercomputers in the world. And experts predict that systems from the US will not be able to overtake them in the near future. Despite the fact that in the top ten most productive computers in the world, 5 of them are created in the US, even all of them are incapable in performance to overtake two leading supercomputers from China.

However, such competitions stimulate and lead to innovation, so it really does not matter who will be the first and the second in the final, while it's about the benefits to the world science.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/technology/kitaj-sobiraetsya-predstavit-pervyj-v-mire-superkompyuter-eksaflopsnogo-urovnya.html.