The Future of The Supercomputers

In mid-November Jaguar, located at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, was named as the world's fastest supercomputer. Recording a performance speed of 1.8 petaflops (One petaflop refers to one quadrillion calculations per second), it took the title away from former champion Roadrunner, at Los Alamos.

In under two years from now, we can expect the Blue Waters system to be be fully operational which, according to the NCSA, will mean:

... breakthroughs in nearly all fields of science using Blue Waters. They will predict the behavior of complex biological systems, understand how the cosmos evolved after the Big Bang, design new materials at the atomic level, predict the behavior of hurricanes and tornadoes, and simulate complex engineered systems like the power distribution system and airplanes and automobiles.

And predictions for the future currently look something like this (from Wikipedia):

Given the current speed of progress, supercomputers are projected to reach 1 exaflops (one quintillion FLOPS) in 2019. Futurist Ray Kurzweil expects supercomputers capable of human brain neural simulations, for which according to Kurzweil 10 exaflops would be required, in 2025.

Erik P. DeBenedictis of Sandia National Laboratories theorizes that a zettaflops (one sextillion FLOPS) computer is required to accomplish full weather modeling, which could cover a two week time span accurately. Such systems might be built around 2030.