Can China build a US$145 million superconducting computer that will change the world?
Chinese scientists are embarking on a one-billion yuan, high-risk, high-reward plan to build low-energy top-performance computing systems
China is building a 1 billion yuan (US$145.4 million) “superconducting computer” – an unprecedented machine capable of developing new weapons, breaking codes, analysing intelligence and – according to official information and researchers involved in the project – helping stave off surging energy demand.
Computers are power-hungry, and increasingly so. According to an estimate by the Semiconductor Industry Association, they will need more electricity than the world can generate by 2040, unless the way they are designed is dramatically improved.
The superconducting computer is one of the most radical advances proposed by scientists to reduce the environmental footprint of machine calculation.
The concept rests on sending electric currents through supercooled circuits made of superconducting materials. The system results in almost zero resistance – in theory at least – and would require just a fraction of the energy of traditional computers, from one-fortieth to one-thousandth, according to some estimates.
INTO THE SUPER LEAGUE
Chinese scientists have already made a number of breakthroughs in applying superconducting technology to computers. They have developed new integrated circuits with superconducting material in labs and tested an industrial process that would enable the production of relatively low cost, sophisticated superconducting chips at mass scale. They have also nearly finished designing the architecture for the computer’s systems.