Obama wants world's fastest supercomputer by 2025

US wants to take back the top spot from China, with a machine that would aid scientific research and national security projects

President Obama has issued an executive order for the US to establish a new initiative that will research and develop the world's fastest supercomputer.

According to a White House blog, the initiative, dubbed the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI), will aim to build supercomputers that are not only faster than anything that currently exists but which will also be able to "efficiently manipulate vast and rapidly increasing quantities of both numerical and non-numerical data".

The NSCI is looking for exaflop computing ability - or superfast speeds, and exabyte storage capability - or huge amounts of storage. It also wants to find ways to combine large-scale numerical computing with big data analytics. The White House believes that this will enable new forms of computation, including simulations of weather that are coupled with actual observations from weather satellites, and what it deems new analytic methods that require more extensive numerical processing, such as techniques which rely on artificial intelligence to automatically learn new capabilities from large samples.

It adds that it believes there are also national security benefits, including using modelling and simulation to improve improvised explosive device (IED) resistant vehicle designs.

The US supercomputer would top the list of most powerful computers on the planet, with the top spot currently occupied by China's Tianhe-2, which performs at 33.86 petaflops. The second most powerful machine is American. Earlier this year, a supercomputer based in the Middle East entered the top 10 list for the first time.

But with the US bidding to have the supercomputer ready by 2025, some sceptics believe that technology may be changing at such a fast pace that the supercomputer may not be up-to-date a decade from now.

"In the technology world, planning and preparation - and predicting future needs - are vital to ensuring that the necessary capacity and skills are in place," said Jason Ward, senior director of enterprise UK&I at EMC.

"Those building the newest supercomputer will need to accurately anticipate the technological environment 10-20 years from now in order to ensure that it is not out-dated before it is even launched," he added.

However, Ward added that the supercomputer would make a huge impact - not only in the technology industry but for the general public.

"Just think of what could be done with it from a data analytics perspective to understand more about everything from genomes to the solar system," he said.