China building third supercomputer center

CHANGSHA, China, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- China is building its third National Supercomputing Center to house a computer capable of performing 1 quadrillion operations per second, officials said.

The new NSCC at Hunan University in Changsha is expected to be completed by the end of 2011, Xinhua reported Monday.

China's other supercomputing centers are in Tianjin and Shenzhen. Earlier this month, the Tianhe-1A computer in Tianjin was certified as the world's fastest supercomputer. It can perform 2.57 quadrillion computing operations per second.

"The setting up of the NSCC in Changsha will raise the innovative level of Hunan province and of central China," said Xu Shousheng, provincial governor of Hunan.

When complete, the Tianhe-1A at Changsha will be used in weather forecasting, scientific research, animation design and other complex work, Xu said.