TIANJIN -- Scientists have started to develop a sample machine that will play a part in the development of a new era supercomputer capable of a billion-billion calculations per second, researchers said Tuesday.

The National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin is developing the exascale supercomputer with the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), said Meng Xiangfei, assistant director of the center.

The aim is to make the computer, which will be capable of a quintillion calculations per second, by 2020.

It will be 200 times faster than China's Tianhe-1 supercomputer, and even faster than the most powerful supercomputers in the world, he said.

China's Sunway TaihuLight is the world's fastest system, capable of 93 quadrillion calculations per second, according to an announcement at the 2016 International Supercomputing Conference, Germany.

This new project will expend on existing theories and applications of the exascale system's hardware and software. The sample machine will hopefully be ready by early 2018, Meng said.

The new era computing system will mark a huge advancement in terms of intensity of calculation, capacity of single chips and the rate of data transmission, he said.

In 2010, the country's first petaflop supercomputer, Tianhe-1, which is capable of at least a million billion calculations per second, was unveiled to the world.

At present, Tianhe-1 supports various tasks including oil exploration, high-end equipment manufacturing, biological medicine and animation design, and serves nearly 1,000 customers.