China is planning a multibillion-dollar investment to upgrade its supercomputer infrastructure to regain leadership after the US took top spot for the fastest supercomputer in 2018, ending China’s five-year dominance, according to people familiar with the matter.
The ability to produce state-of-the-art supercomputers is an important metric of any nation’s technical prowess as they are widely deployed for tasks ranging from weather predictions and modelling ocean currents to energy technology and simulating nuclear explosions. Demand for supercomputing in commercial applications is also on the rise, driven by developments in artificial intelligence.
“Huge information processing capability is the foundation of artificial intelligence, the industrial internet, 5G and other future industries,” said Cao Zhongxiong, executive director of new technology studies at Shenzhen-based think tank China Development Institute. “Although the US is a major competitor and it has tried to rein in China’s progress, the enormous internal demand for supercomputing capacity has forced China to solve the problems through its independent development.
Story continuesThe US has its Exascale Computing Project with the goal of launching an exascale computing ecosystem by 2021.