(Yicai Global) Oct. 19 -- China is developing an exascale supercomputer and intends to introduce it by 2020, said Meng Xiangfei, head of the National Supercomputer Center's applications department.

"In the past few years, China has made breakthroughs in supercomputing development and application, with its supercomputing speed ranking first in the world," Science and Technology Daily quoted the leading computer scientist as saying today. Tianhe-I, China's first petascale supercomputer, can carry out more than 1,400 computing tasks simultaneously, and it can complete around 10,000 tasks per day, he said.

Difficulties caused Japan and the US to push back their timelines for developing exascale supercomputers to 2022, but China still plans to make one by 2020, said Meng.

Meng revealed Japan and America have delayed the time for successful development of exascale supercomputer to 2022 due to great difficulties, but China still plans to make it by 2020, he said. Last year, the national key research and development scheme outlined the construction of a prototype exascale supercomputer system in two phases -- prototype preparation and the official initiation of the supercomputer project.

Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) cannot improve without the support of supercomputers, Meng said. China is exploring building a platform integrating supercomputing, AI and Big Data, and developing more industrial projects, such as a big data platform for steel smelting blast furnaces, digital mines and unmanned mining information systems, upgrading traditional industries and promoting the emerging ones, he said.