BEIJING: China is developing a supercomputer capable of at least a billion billion calculations per second that will be operationalised by 2020, a top official has said.

According to the national plan for the next generation of high performance computers, China will develop an ‘exascale computer’ during the 13th Five-Year-Plan period (2016-2020).

“The government of Tianjin Binhai New Area, NUDT and the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin are working on the project, and we plan to name it Tianhe-3,” said Liao Xiangke, head of National University of Defence Technology (NUDT).

In 2010, China’s first petaflop supercomputer Tianhe-1 capable of at least a million billion calculations per second came into service in the supercomputing centre.

At present, Tianhe-1 performs various tasks including oil exploration, high-end equipment manufacturing, biological medicine and animation design, and serves nearly 1,000 customers, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.