[Reading Science] 'Domestic Accelerator' Korea Takes 'First Step' Toward Independent Development of Supercomputer

ETRI Successfully Develops K-AB21
To Be Featured at SC24, the Largest Supercomputing Event

South Korea has taken its first step toward joining the ranks of global supercomputer powerhouses. Domestic researchers announced on the 30th of last month that they successfully developed Korea's first accelerator chip for supercomputers, the ‘K-AB21,’ turning the dream of becoming the world's fifth supercomputer-producing country from a vague imagination into an imminent reality.

The K-AB21 accelerator was developed by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), the national supercomputer operating agency, playing a central role in software development. ETRI and KISTI joined forces to research and develop a domestically produced supercomputer.

Supercomputers have become essential infrastructure in various advanced industries such as advanced data analysis, artificial intelligence (AI) research, and scientific simulations. Until now, South Korea has relied on foreign products and components while maintaining a top 10 global supercomputer ranking, but this research achievement offers a glimpse of the possibility of technological independence. The government plans to use this success as a stepping stone to further strengthen the domestic supercomputing ecosystem and enhance Korea's technological competitiveness on the global stage through niche market technology strategies.

In the past, supercomputers primarily relied on central processing unit (CPU)-based calculations, but recently, parallel computing using accelerators such as graphics processing units (GPUs) has become increasingly important. GPUs have the advantage of processing more calculations simultaneously compared to CPUs, making them favorable for large-scale data analysis, scientific simulations, and AI training. Supercomputers utilizing GPUs can be used in both AI and high-performance computing (HPC), offering performance that surpasses the limitations of traditional CPU-based supercomputers. This is why GPU-based supercomputers are gaining attention in the AI era. Korea’s national supercomputer No. 6 and the Korea Meteorological Administration’s next-generation supercomputer are also being developed based on GPUs.

K-AB21 accelerator developed with domestic technology. Photo by ETRI

The newly developed K-AB21 accelerator chip was jointly developed by ETRI’s Artificial Intelligence Computing Research Center and the Intelligent Semiconductor Research Division. It is the first high-performance supercomputer chip independently developed in Korea, integrating 10 billion transistors. According to the research team, this chip supports double-precision floating-point operations (FP64) with high accuracy, designed to accelerate scientific calculations and engineering simulations. The accelerator will be unveiled for the first time at Supercomputing24 (SC24), the world’s largest supercomputer technology exhibition held in Atlanta, USA, on the 18th of this month, where its performance and functions will be verified.

The K-AB21 boasts a performance of 8 teraflops (TF), capable of performing 8 trillion calculations per second. ETRI explained that the K-AB21, manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) 12-nanometer process, outperforms Nvidia’s ‘V100,’ which was produced using the same process and delivers 7 TF. However, it should be noted that the V100 has been mass-produced since 2017, while the K-AB21 is only now a prototype. The V100 has since evolved into the A100, H100, and Blackwell models.

Although the performance is similar to a product released about seven years ago, this is a significant achievement given Korea’s relatively short experience in accelerator development. The challenge lies in the fact that Nvidia releases new products every two years, achieving rapid performance improvements. Even if Korea pursues, Nvidia’s lead grows faster, making the challenge difficult. This underscores the need for additional investment.

The National Supercomputer No. 5, Nurion, was manufactured using overseas technology. Photo by KISTI

ETRI researchers evaluated that this development laid the technological foundation for building an independent supercomputer ecosystem. A supercomputer is not made up of just an accelerator chip. Various supporting technologies must be combined, including software that performs ultra-high-speed calculations to ensure the entire system operates stably, cooling technologies that efficiently manage heat, and high-speed interfaces that increase data transfer rates.

Particularly important is the software developed under KISTI’s leadership. KISTI completed essential supercomputer software components such as compilers, runtimes, and device drivers, maximizing synergy with ETRI’s accelerator chip. They played a key role in maximizing the computational performance of this supercomputer accelerator system.

KISTI emphasizes that a supercomputer is a complex system combining not only hardware but also high-performance software and cooling technologies.

Jominsoo, Acting Director of KISTI, stated, "Independent development of supercomputers at the national level is essential. Through this, we must establish a truly user-centered supercomputing environment and achieve technological self-reliance." He also mentioned that when the supercomputer development task force was launched, he set a goal for the staff to complete the project within 30 years.

With this successful development, South Korea has established an important foothold toward self-reliance in high-performance computing. Currently, only a few countries such as the United States, China, Japan, and the European Union (EU) possess independent supercomputer manufacturing technologies.

Han Woojong, a research fellow at ETRI’s Supercomputing Systems Research Lab, said, "This is a significant step toward the independence of Korea’s supercomputing systems, which have long relied on foreign products," and added, "We hope to secure competitiveness with Korean technology in the accelerator market, which is dominated by global big tech companies."

The research team has filed 29 domestic and international patents and published 15 papers in SCI (Science Citation Index) journals as a result of this development. Moving forward, they plan to target niche markets for high-performance supercomputers through commercialization while promoting technology transfer to related industries such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, edge servers, and AI education. The researchers aim to further advance accelerator technology for supercomputers through additional development and to revitalize the related industrial ecosystem, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of domestic companies.