China aims to build the biggest high performance computer grid in the world with an ambitious plan to connect 100 universities with the help of the US semiconductor giant Intel.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) and Intel yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding in Beijing on the development of a computer grid linking 100 leading Chinese universities by 2005 on the China Education and Research Network (CERNET).

"This marks a milestone in our co-operation with Intel on information technology applications in China and it will make great contributions to the execution of MOE's computer grid project,'' said Xie Huanzhong, director-general of the Department of Science and Technology under MOE.

The grid is expected to have a peak computing speed of more than 20,000 giga-floating point operations per second and a storage capacity of more than 500 terabytes, exceeding the size of the world's biggest present grid, in the United States.

A computer grid, which works like a power grid, enables computing resources distributed over a vast area to share resources and work collaboratively and is one of the most advanced computing technologies.

"We are extremely committed to this project,'' said Wee Theng Tan, president of Intel China.

The 12 universities involved in the first phase of the project will each get two supercomputers equipped with Intel's Intanium 2 processors.

The US chip maker also promised to provide development tools, assistance in the development of applications and consulting service to MOE.

The ministry will spend 25 million yuan (US$3 million) in the first phase project, which will include completion of the upgrading of the band width of CERNET from 2.5 gigabytes to 10 gigabytes by the end of the year, at a cost of 130 million yuan (US$15.70 million), to facilitate operation of the grid.

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