"Tianhe II" supercomputer coming soon

On March 11, 2012, Chen Jianhua, Mayor of Guangzhou, headed adelegation to Changsha, Hunan Province. The delegation visitedleaders of the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT),exchanging ideas on matters concerning jointly developing thenew-generation supercomputer system. Hopefully, the pilot unit ofthe supercomputer will be able to go into operation at Sun Yat-senUniversity (SYSU) in April and Guangzhou Supercomputer Center (GSC)will be inaugurated simultaneously, said Chen, adding Guangzhouwill, together with all quarters, build and apply the centerproperly to promote economic transformation and benefit people'slivelihood.

Guangzhou will strive to put into operation the pilot system ofthe supercomputer in April and inaugurate GSC at SYSUsimultaneously, with the aim of building a world leadingsupercomputer center by late 2015. According to sources, thenew-generation high-performance computer system, jointly developedby NUDT and cooperative parties in Guangdong, will be named "TianheII", with the aim of making it run more than 100,000 trillioncalculations per second by late 2015, more than 10 times the speedof currently the world's fastest "K" system of Japan and more than20 times the speed of currently China's fastest supercomputer inTianjin. Then, "Tianhe II" will become a world top supercomputer.Now, SYSU and the Guangzhou Municipal Government are working on GSCsiting and construction plan selection. According to a person incharge of Bureau of Science and Information Technology of GuangzhouMunicipality, the total investment will amount to some RMB 2.4billion yuan, including the cost of computer R &D and the costof civil construction.

In the future, GSC will become a storage and control center forurban information service and data service, the expert said. Afterthe supercomputer center is established, the video taken bysurveillance cameras in the city may be stored for long periods oftime without being destroyed regularly. Mass data, such as personaldata on social security, medical security and endowment insurance,can also be stored in GSC.