Central China's Hunan Province began building the country's third National Supercomputing Center (NSCC) Sunday, where the world's fastest supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, will be installed.

Designed to handle one quadrillion computing operations per second, the NSCC in Changsha will add to the world's eight quadrillion-level supercomputing centers and national labs, said Du Zhanyuan, vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The new NSCC will be housed in Hunan University in Changsha, capital of Hunan, and the construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2011, said Du.

Earlier this month, the Tianhe-1A at the NSCC in Tianjin, which is capable of 2.57 quadrillion computing operations per second, was certified as the world's fastest supercomputer.

Once completed, the Tianhe-1A at the NSCC in Changsha will be able to provide supercomputing services to the weather forecast, scientific research, biological pharmaceuticals, animation design and other complex work in central China, said Xu Shousheng, provincial governor of Hunan.

"The setting up of the NSCC in Changsha will raise the innovative level of Hunan Province and of central China," said Xu.

Apart from the ongoing-construction, China has built two supercomputing centers which are located in Tianjin and Shenzhen, respectively.

(Xinhua News Agency November 29, 2010)