Asia's top supercomp to go commercial in 2010
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Asia's fastest supercomputer was partly installed last week in Tianjin, China and will be undergoing final tests before commencing operations in January 2010, according to a Chinese media report.
A Monday report on the Web site of the People's Daily, a publication sanctioned by the Communist Party of China, said Tianhe-1, based in the National SuperComputer Center in Tianjin, is expected to be fully operational in the second half of 2010.
Named after the Milky Way, Tianhe-1 was No. 5 in the latest iteration of the Top500 list of supercomputers released last month. It was also ranked eighth in the November 2009 Green500 list, which identifies the top energy-efficient supercomputers globally.
Tianhe-1, according to the report, is theoretically capable of over 1 quadrillion calculations per second, or a peak performance of 1 petaflop. It added that the supercomputing cluster will be targeted at both local and overseas markets for various purposes, including petroleum exploration data processing, biomedical research, aviation equipment development and resource exploration.
A spokesperson from National SuperComputer Center said in the report the facility will promote Tianhe-1 from January 2010 and deploy the system according to customers' software needs.