The project to introduce Super Computer No. 6, which is more than 20 times more powerful than “Nurion,” the 5th ultra-high-performance computer (supercomputer) in active service, will be carried out with the goal of 2024.

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) held a press conference in Jongno-gu, Seoul on the morning of the 27th to explain the project to introduce the 6th supercomputer.

Its goal is to perform about 600 petaflops (PF). 1 flops is a unit that means one operation per second, and 1 petaflops means 1,000 trillion operations per second. In other words, Unit 6 can calculate 64 digits of binary digits 6 billion times per second. The No. 5 Nurion currently in use is 25.7 Petaflops.

In addition, Unit 6 will be provided as a GPU that can be used for artificial intelligence research about 30% of its computing power. Existing supercomputers were manufactured mainly with CPU, so there was a limit to research on artificial intelligence, and KISTI has responded to demand by operating GPU clusters with Unit 5. With the introduction of Unit 6, the national supercomputer infrastructure will cover the artificial intelligence area in earnest.

“The ratio of task support (to demand) is currently decreasing due to the system overload of Unit 5, and system replacement is essential for efficient operation,” KISTI said. “We need to respond to a surge in new demand in the large science and artificial intelligence sectors.”

In August, the Ministry of Science and ICT completed a preliminary feasibility study on the “Advanced National Flagship Ultra-Performance Computing Infrastructure” project and decided to pass it. The project was designed to introduce Super Computer No. 6.