New era of supercomputers is coming

A new era in computing that will see machines perform at least 1,000 times faster than today's most powerful supercomputers is almost upon us. By the end of the decade, exaFLOP computers are predicted to go online heralding a new chapter in scientific discovery, according to a report of CNN. The United States, China, Japan, the European Union and Russia are all investing millions of dollars in supercomputer research. In February, the EU announced it was doubling investment in research to €1.2 billion ($1.6 billion). Highlighting what is an exaFLOP, Computer scientists measure a supercomputer's performance in FLOPS, an acronym for FLoating Point Operations per Second, while "exa" is a metric prefix which stands for quintillion (or a billion billion). An Exascale computer could perform approximately as many operations per second as 50 million laptops.