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China Breaks Ground on Futuristic Supercomputer Complex


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National Supercomputing Center rendering

A rendering of China's third National Supercomputing Center. The roof on the round building could be used to collect water.

Credit: Xinhua News Agency

China recently held a ground-breaking ceremony and released the designs for its new supercomputing center, which will be located in Changsha. The rendering consists of two buildings, one saucer-shaped and the other rectangular. The underground level of the saucer-shaped building would be an ideal location for the Tianhe-1A supercomputer, and the round roof could be used for water collection. The rectangular building could hold labs, classrooms, and offices, says Bick Group's Tad Davies.

China wants to develop at least one system capable of 50 petaflops to 100 petaflops by 2015, according to an official from the Supercomputing Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences. China also has set the goal of creating an exascale system, which is thousands of times faster than a petaflop, by 2020. "[China seeks to] integrate electronic warfare, cyberoperations, [psychological operations], denial and deception, and kinetic attack to defeat adversary information systems," says U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center's China issue manager Wayne Ulman.

The Chinese also have demonstrated how supercomputers can be used to determine the radar cross-section of an airplane or ship, says Rand Corp.'s Roger Cliff.

From Computerworld
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