China's third exascale supercomputer prototype was put in operation on Aug 5 at the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, capital of Shandong province.

The Sunway Level-E exascale computer prototype was developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC), the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan and the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao).

The NRCPC led the team that developed Sunway TaihuLight, which was crowned as the world's fastest computer for two consecutive years at both the 2016 and 2017 International Supercomputing Conferences held in Frankfurt, Germany. 

"The Sunway Level-E exascale computer prototype is highly similar to a concept car that can hit the road," said Yang Meihong, director of the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan. 

According to Yang, the Sunway Level-E exascale computers are expected to hit the market by 2020. 

Another prototype of China's new-generation exascale supercomputer Tianhe-3 passed the acceptance tests on July 22. Its final version is expected to come out in 2020. 

The two prototypes marked another step forward for the country to the crown of the world's fastest and most powerful supercomputer with speed peak to level E -- denoting processing speeds hitting 1,000 petaflops/s, and a great leap calculation density, transmission speeds and power consumption. 

An exascale computer is able to execute quintillion calculations per second, approximately eight times faster than Sunway TaihuLight. The increase in computational speed will advance research in climate change, space science, medicine and oceanology among others. 

The National Supercomputer Center in Jinan has been equipped with the Sunway BlueLight supercomputer for seven years, which is capable of performing around one-thousand-trillion calculations per second.

The computing power of the Sunway Level-E exascale computer prototype is triple that of the BlueLight supercomputer, with only one ninth the size of the latter and with energy consumption dropping by 75 percent. 

The Sunway Level-E exascale computer prototype has completed 35 major computing tasks in 12 fields, including global climate change, ocean numerical simulation, biomedical simulation, big data processing and brain-like intelligence, and its future application prospects are very promising. 

Xinhua contributed to this story. 

Pan Jingshan, deputy director of the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, delivers a speech at the launching ceremony of the Sunway Level-E exascale computer prototype on Aug 5. [Photo/Xinhua] 

An engineer examines the equipment of the Sunway Level-E exascale computer prototype at the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, Shandong province, Aug 5. [Photo/Xinhua]

An engineer inspects the Sunway Level-E exascale computer prototype at the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, Shandong province, Aug 5. [Photo/Xinhua]