Would be nice to have POET involved

According to the United States intelligence community, it has launched a research project to develop superconducting computer with the power and cooling capacities beyond anything in existence today.

The community announced that it has awarded first contracts to three technology companies- International Business Machines Corp, Raytheon BBN Technologies and Northrop Grumman Corp. The companies will work on Cryogenic Computer Complexity, or C3.

Currently, the fastest supercomputer is Tianhe-2, which is a 33.86-petaflops supercomputer situated at Sun Yat-sen University, China. The supercomputer was developed by China's National University of Defense Technology. According to the reports, the superconducting computer would be able to perform about a quintillion calculations every second.

According to C3 program manager at Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), Marc Manheimer, power, cooling and space requirements of today's supercomputers are based on CMOS technology.

Manheimer said, "Computers based on superconducting logic integrated with new kinds of cryogenic memory will allow expansion of current computing facilities while staying within space and energy budgets, and may enable supercomputer development beyond the exascale".

According to the reports, the companies have planned to make the C3 program in five years. The program will be a two-phase endeavor. First phase of the program will take three years. In that time, the companies will develop a small superconducting processor. The second phase, which will take two years, will include the integration of the new technologies into a small-scale working superconducting computer model.

Manheimer said major components of the C3 project are cryogenic memory, which will allow expansion of today's computing facilities.

ComputerWorld magazine stated that tough competition from nations such as China, Japan and Europe had forced the US to develop superconducting supercomputers.