Taiwan's most powerful supercomputer to go online in Q3: NCHC

Taipei, March 29 (CNA) Taiwan's most powerful supercomputer, "Chingchuang 26 (晶創26)," is expected to go online in the third quarter of this year, aiming to boost artificial intelligence development tailored to local needs, according to its developer.

The system will primarily serve the public sector, academia and industry, helping users develop and train AI models in fields such as finance and defense, National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) Director-general Chang Chau-lyan (張朝亮) told CNA recently.

"We have high expectations for Chingchuang 26 and hope it can meet Taiwan's urgent demand for computing power," Chang said.

Taiwan's total supercomputing capacity will more than triple within about a year, rising to over 114 petaflops, with the new system alone to deliver around 82 petaflops, he said.

A petaflop is a unit used to measure a computer's speed, especially for complex calculations. One petaflop means the system can perform one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second.

The supercomputer, equipped with NVIDIA's H200-based computing system using advanced 4-nanometer process technology, has been undergoing testing since February, said Chang.

One-third of its computing power will be set aside for startups and smaller firms, which often face barriers in accessing high-end infrastructure, he said.

"Many teams have strong ideas but lack the resources to test them," Chang said, adding that the system will support development, testing and pilot runs in a secure environment.

To meet demand across sectors, another one-third of the system's capacity will be allocated to academic research and the rest to government use, he said.

Chang said the goal is to help build AI systems that better reflect Taiwan's needs, particularly through training domain-specific large language models using local data.

The system was previously showcased internationally, with its "Nano4" component ranking 29th in the global TOP500 supercomputer list in November 2025.