The Russian Academy of Sciences announced it has started construction of a new supercomputer to perform at 10 petaflops, the newspaper Izvestia reports.
One petaflop is a supercomputer’s ability to process one quadrillion (or 1,000 trillion) FLOPS (floating point operations per second).
The first two sections of the supercomputer are expected to start operation at 2 petaflops by the end of this year. When it reaches its full capacity – sometime in 2013, under the Academy’s plans – the supercomputer is likely to rank among the 10 most powerful in the world.
The Academy also emphasizes that the new supercomputer is being designed to meet the highest standards for energy efficiency.
An infusion of funding of 2 billion rubles (approximately $60 million) is expected to complete the project.
The Top 500 Supercomputer Sites ranking currently lists five Russian supercomputers. They are owned by the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Moscow State University, the South Urals State University in Chelyabinsk, as well as by the Kurchatov Institute, Russia’s leading research and development institution in the field of nuclear energy.
The Moscow State University has also announced its plans to build a 10-petaflop supercomputer by 2013 or 2014.
The world’s most powerful supercomputer, according to the Top 500 Supercomputer Sites, is IBM’s Sequoia performing at 16.32 petaflops.
