The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said Monday that the Ministry of Strategy and Finance plans to soon launch a feasibility study on the ICT agency’s plan to expand the nation’s supercomputer network infrastructure.

It could take about six months for the Finance Ministry to complete the feasibility study and allow the ICT Ministry to proceed with adopting supercomputers beginning in 2016, an ICT Ministry official noted.

It seeks to secure a budget of around 200 billion won ($188 million) as requested in its 2012 plan.

The plan, which was devised in 2012, also called for Korea to rank among the top 20 economies in terms of having indigenous supercomputers with fast processing and calculation technologies by 2019.

The U.S. remains the world’s top economy in superior supercomputer infrastructure and invests the most in research and development.

China, meanwhile, owns the world’s fastest supercomputer.

Korea has five supercomputers, built with foreign technology and parts, but they have aged considerably. The Korea Meteorological Administration uses one of them to process data for weather forecasting, the official noted.

By Park Hyong-ki (hkp@heraldcorp.com)