The National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL) on Monday unveiled the Taiwania, the most powerful supercomputer that has yet been built indigenously for publicly funded research.
Operating at peak efficiency, Taiwania can perform up to 1.33 quadrillion floating-point operations per second (petaflops) and has 3.4 petabytes of storage, NARL National Center for High-Performance Computing official Lu Hung-fu (盧鴻復) said.
When the graphics processing units’ (GPU) capacity is added to the total computing power, Taiwania’s performance increases to 1.7 petaflops, he said.
Photo: Chien Hui-ju, Taipei Times
The supercomputer consists of 630 pure central processing units (CPUs) and 64 mixed central and graphics processing units, which boast a total of 25,200 Intel cores and 256 Nvidia P100 GPU accelators, he said.
The two-year program to build the cluster cost NT$430 million (US$14.44 million), he said.
The new supercomputer is vastly superior to the Advanced Large-scale Parallel Supercluster (ALPS) — also known as Windrider — that used to be the NARL’s most powerful cluster, he said.
Taiwania has seven times the processing power of ALPS, while its energy efficiency of 4 gigaflops per watt is an order of magnitude better, the center said.
Additionally, Taiwania’s high-density design is more volume-efficient at one-third the size of ALPS, the center said.
Taiwania is the first state-owned supercomputer to perform at petascale speeds and it was built to meet the high-performance computing needs of the nation’s research institutions, center director-general Shieh Ce-kuen said.
Taiwania has a wide range of practical applications in the simulation and analysis of complex phenomena, which facilitates biomedical research, such as gene or neurological pathway mapping, Hsieh said.
Taiwania’s computing ability will allow Taiwanese neuroscientists to scale up their neurological mapping studies from fruit fly brains of 130,000 neurons to mice brains of 70 million neurons, he said.
Such research could lead to faster medical diagnoses of hereditary conditions and deepen the understanding of neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, he said.
Furthermore, Taiwania could be used for air pollution-related research and provide faster alerts for dangerous air quality conditions, he said.
Taiwania is scheduled to be activated today and private research groups may utilize the cluster for an hourly fee of NT$0.7, he said.
NARL is to decommission its older supercomputers ALPS, Iris and Formosa 5 by no later than September, he said.
NEXT GENERATION: The four plants in the Central Taiwan Science Park, designated Fab 25, would consist of four 1.4-nanometer wafer manufacturing plants, TSMC said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) plans to begin construction of four new plants later this year, with the aim to officially launch production of 2-nanometer semiconductor wafers by late 2028, Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau director-general Hsu Maw-shin (許茂新) said. Hsu made the announcement at an event on Friday evening celebrating the Central Taiwan Science Park’s 22nd anniversary. The second phase of the park’s expansion would commence with the initial construction of water detention ponds and other structures aimed at soil and water conservation, Hsu said. TSMC has officially leased the land, with the Central Taiwan Science Park having handed over the
AUKUS: The Australian Ambassador to the US said his country is working with the Pentagon and he is confident that submarine issues will be resolved Australian Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd on Friday said that if Taiwan were to fall to China’s occupation, it would unleash China’s military capacities and capabilities more broadly. He also said his country is working with the Pentagon on the US Department of Defense’s review of the AUKUS submarine project and is confident that all issues raised will be resolved. Rudd, who served as Australian prime minister from 2007 to 2010 and for three months in 2013, made the remarks at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado and stressed the longstanding US-Australia alliance and his close relationship with the US Undersecretary
‘WORLD WAR III’: Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said the aid would inflame tensions, but her amendment was rejected 421 votes against six The US House of Representatives on Friday passed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal 2026, which includes US$500 million for Taiwan. The bill, which totals US$831.5 billion in discretionary spending, passed in a 221-209 vote. According to the bill, the funds for Taiwan would be administered by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency and would remain available through Sept. 30, 2027, for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative. The legislation authorizes the US Secretary of Defense, with the agreement of the US Secretary of State, to use the funds to assist Taiwan in procuring defense articles and services, and military training. Republican Representative
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
RSS