Taiwan would increase its total computing power threefold to 114.31 petaflops when its fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), launches in the third quarter, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said.
Nano 4 would operate at about 86.05 petaflops and is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The supercomputer features 220 Nvidia H200 nodes, each equipped with eight H200 GPUs and 2 terabytes of memory, and is the first in Taiwan to deploy Nvidia’s flagship artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform introduced last year — two GB200 NVL72 systems, each configured with 72 Blackwell GPUs and 13.5 terabytes of memory.
Taiwan has been slightly behind in building advanced computing capacity due to a limited budget, NCHC director-general Chang Chau-lyan (張朝亮) said, adding that Nano 4 would provide the strong support Taiwan needs to accelerate AI development.
Nano 4’s computing power would be shared by the government, industry and academic researchers, as well as projects funded by the National Science and Technology Council, he said. The supercomputer would be deployed to create large language models in finance, law, national defense and other sectors.
Although China no longer publishes statistics on its computing capacity, it reportedly has at least twice the computing power that Nano 4 would provide, while the US is estimated to hold about half of the world’s total supercomputing capacity.
However, Taiwan holds a strategic position in the AI supply chain and has the potential to become a global leader in certain aspects of supercomputing. The nation produces most of the chips that modern supercomputers rely on, such as the Nvidia H100 and B200. It also has strong research infrastructure through the NCHC and leading engineering programs at National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.
The areas in which Taiwan is at a disadvantage are limited land, tight power supply and less private investment in computing capacity compared with the US, where companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platforms are spending tens of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure. Taiwan must also compete for top global talent, which is often drawn to the US or Europe by higher salaries, larger research budgets and more extensive AI ecosystems.
The power supply issue might soon improve, as there is cross-party consensus on restarting shuttered nuclear power plants. There have also been reports that government officials have held discussions with Paraguay about converting the South American ally’s surplus renewable energy into computing power.
AI and supercomputing are beneficial to Taiwan. Supercomputers aid semiconductor design by running advanced chip simulations before fabrication, optimizing lithography and transistor layouts, and modeling heat, power consumption and signal interference in chips. They also bolster earthquake and natural disaster prediction by analyzing large data models, allow researchers to simulate molecular interactions and accelerate drug development, and improve infrastructure planning and traffic flow optimization in cities such as Taipei through the processing of massive datasets.
Most crucially for Taiwan, supercomputing could enhance national defense. Supercomputers could run military simulations and wargaming, conduct cybersecurity analysis, process satellite and radar data, and assist with missile defense modeling.
Some of these applications could be handled offshore, meaning Taiwan would not necessarily need to compete with China or other countries in terms of domestic computing capacity. Weather and disaster modeling, urban infrastructure planning and drug design could all be handled by data centers in Paraguay, for example, through a data embassy agreement. This would allow Taiwan to process data where it is more economically feasible while retaining sovereignty over its models and datasets.
National defense planning and modeling, advanced chip design simulations and cybersecurity analysis — areas with clear national security implications — could instead be handled by supercomputers on Taiwanese soil. The NCHC, together with Taiwanese industry giants such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, could form partnerships with companies such as Nvidia and AMD to jointly develop custom AI hardware and software systems tailored to Taiwan’s defense needs, further ensuring the security of those systems.
Taiwan can maximize the benefits of advances in supercomputing by balancing domestic capabilities with offshore processing of nonsensitive datasets. Increasingly powerful supercomputers can also accelerate the development of more sophisticated semiconductors, helping ensure that Taiwan maintains its dominant position in the global AI and supercomputing supply chain.
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