It was released from the working conference on the construction of Hunan's key projects held on February 4 that the Supercomputer Center of Hunan Province, with a total investment of 670 million yuan, will be set up in Hunan University. The center covering a total area of 28,000 square meters will be initiated by the Hunan Provincial Development and Reform Commission . The first- phase project will be carried out to meet the capability of performing 300 trillion calculations per second.

The spokesman of the Hunan Provincial Office for Key Project Construction said that with the rapid development of the science, technology and economy in the province and with the accelerated construction of the "two-oriented society" in Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan city cluster, there is an increasing need for high performance computation in such fields as the equipment manufacturing industry, biological medicine production, materials science, computer nanotechnology, basic science research, digital media and so on. Therefore, it is pressing demand for the establishment of the suited supercomputer center and of the platform of information infrastructure and technological innovation which can promote the integration of informationization and industrialization. The construction of the supercomputer center exerts far-reaching significance on comprehensively improving the core competitive edge of hi-tech and info-tech fields in Hunan Province and catching up with the comprehensive science and technology level of the developed regions alongside the seacoast.