South Korea launches its Hangang supercomputer with quantum plans for 2027

[Shannon]

South Korea has switched on its most powerful national supercomputer yet. The Quantum Insider reports that the science ministry and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, KISTI, launched Hangang, the country's sixth national supercomputer, in Daejeon on 2 November

Hangang replaces Nurion, which arrived in 2018. It has 8,496 GPUs, including Nvidia GH200 chips, and 9,936 CPUs. Compared with Nurion, it offers 24 times the theoretical performance, ten times the storage and four times the network performance

Direct liquid cooling improves its power usage effectiveness to about 1.15, down from 1.35, according to Hong Tae-young, head of KISTI's Supercomputing Infrastructure Center. Its resources will be split 55 percent for research, 30 percent for national strategic projects and 15 percent for industry and small businesses, with official service beginning on 16 December and around 190 projects supported during the trial

KISTI plans to connect Hangang with a quantum computer around the first half of 2027. President Lee Sik said supercomputers calculate very quickly but take a long time to optimise. A top ten global ranking is expected on the next supercomputer list, but that has not yet been confirmed

Linking classical supercomputers with quantum processors is quickly becoming standard practice, and Korea is joining that trend. A 24 fold performance jump is a huge upgrade for the country's researchers. Setting aside capacity for small businesses is a nice touch

How useful will quantum and supercomputer hybrids be? And can Korea break into the global top ten?

South Korea Launches Hangang Supercomputer, Plans Quantum Integrationthequantuminsider.com