In the USA, a supercomputer on superconductors is being developed for intelligence agencies

Supercomputers are needed not only for astronomers, meteorologists, nuclear scientists. Military service intelligence agencies also need solid computing power. One of the US national intelligence units initiated the development of a new type of supercomputer.

The development will be carried out as part of the Cryogenic Computing Systems project, and the project will be managed by IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity). According to experts from this organization, the use of superconductors will increase the overall performance of computer systems.

At the same time, the power consumption of the system and its dimensions will be comparable to the previous generation of supercomputers, but the performance will probably reach 1 exaflops and more by 2020. At the same time to conduct 100 petaflops computing power (quadrillion operations per second) will need about 200 kW of energy. For comparison, the Titan supercomputer consumes 9.2 MW of power for a performance of 20 petaflops.
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One of the main problems for developers of supercomputers is the creation of a reliable and practical cooling system. And if you manage to create a supercomputer on superconductors, then this problem will become less relevant (although, of course, there will be a problem of maintaining low temperature for superconductors).

At the first stage of development, the agency plans to develop a general concept for the new system, show the elements of the infrastructure of such a supercomputer, and create separate blocks. Over time, the development will be implemented, individual components - added to the system. For the first three years, it is planned to develop critical components for memory and logical subsystems.

It should be noted that the project will be implemented not by the developers of IARPA, but by contractors - by IBM, Raytheon-BBN and Northrop Grumman Corporation.