Yesterday, President Obama signed an executive order to establish the National Strategic Computing Initiative, intended to advance American research efforts that require high-capacity computing (HCC). The main thrust of the program, according to a blog post from the White House, would be to create the world's fastest supercomputer, which would be 20 times faster than today's fastest supercomputer, China's Tianhe-2. The machine would be called an exascale computer--capable of making a billion billion—or one exaflop—calculations per second.
Old supercomputers don't die, they just get practical day jobs. China's Tianhe-1A, the fastest supercomputer in the world in 2011, is now being put to use tracking the terrifying and deadly clouds of pollution that come with burning almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined, according to a report from Xinhua, a state-owned media company.
There's been a lot of talk over the last week about the Square Kilometre Array, and the final showdown in the bid for rights to host the primary array, now just between Australia and South Africa. A team involving a number of scientists in Western Australia, however, are already in the throes of planning how to deal with the mass of data the SKA will generate, possibly reaching up to an exabyte a day through the front end antennae, with the final array likely requiring a supercomputer faster than any currently in existence.
Back in June when the latest edition of TOP500 dropped (TOP500 lists the world's top supercomputers), Japan's K Computer leapt ahead of China's Tianhe-1A supercomputer to become the biggest, baddest computing platform on the planet. But after more than a year of slipping down the ranks as its competitors across the Pacific surged ahead, Oak Ridge National Labs Jaguar supercomputer is poised to become the fastest computer in the world once more.
