An exascale computer is able to execute a quintillion calculations (1030) per second. There is presently strong competition among the USA, Japan and China on the development of such machines. China on Sunday put into operation a prototype exascale computing machine, the Sunway exascale computer prototype developed by a team around the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC). The NRCPC had developed Sunway TaihuLight, crowned the world’s fastest computer two years in a row at both the 2016 and 2017 International Supercomputing Conferences held in Frankfurt, Germany. Another prototype exascale supercomputer Tianhe-3 passed the acceptance tests on July 22. Its final version is expected to come out in 2020.
CAS news release, August 7, 2018
