US President Obama has signed an executive order launching an ambitious program to build the world’s mightiest supercomputer to leave rivals green with envy.
The supercomputer, part of a larger program called the National Strategic Computing Initiative, 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—(1018 operations) per second.
The Tianhe-2 which translates as Milky Way-2 or Heavenriver-2 in China's National Computer Centre is a 33.86-petaflops supercomputer used as a "research and educational" tool.
It is followed by Titan (US), Sequoia (US), K computer (Japan), Mira (US), Piz Daint (Switzerland), Shaheen II (Saudi Arabia), Stampede (US), JUQUEEN (Germany) and Vulcan (US), according to the TOP500 ranking, a widely-recognised barometer of the state of worldwide supercomputing.
“High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems, through their high levels of computing power and large amounts of storage capacity, have been and remain essential to economic competitiveness, scientific discovery, and national security,” the White House released a statement about the plan.
In addition to its use in complex scientific simulations such as DNA sequencing and meteorological modelling, “there are also national security benefits, including using modeling and simulation to improve IED-resistant vehicle designs”.
Such a machine could also be used to crack any encryption that protects data held by and transactions with banks, credit card companies, retailers, brokerages, governments and health care providers.
According to the revelation from documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden early this year, the US spy agency is working to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets.
With such technology, all current forms of public key encryption, considered practically unbreakable with existing systems, would be cracked, including those used on many secure Web sites for encrypted data transmission as well as the type used to protect state secrets.
