A very fast supercomputer, a photonic one, will appear in Russia. Scientists from the Research Center for Supercomputers and Neurocomputers in Taganrog are working on it. The director of the Research Center, Professor Ilya Levin, spoke about the project.
We are engaged in the synthesis of supercomputer architecture, developing the appearance of a digital photonic machine and computing elements: arithmetic logic devices, synchronization and communication systems. This is our contribution to the overall task facing Russian scientists - the creation of domestic supercomputers with performance far exceeding the modern level.
However, scientists still face several problems that need to be solved. For example, there is no equally fast RAM and data storage system for a photonic computer. Therefore, it will be necessary to combine the slow memory of a regular PC with photonic high-speed information processing tools.
We are engaged in creating elements that can do this without losing efficiency. These are primarily devices for processing operand streams based on sign-bit codes, focused on sequential processing of information with the most significant bits first. Since there will be many devices, the total performance will be much higher than that of a regular computer.
