The U.S. Department of Energy has begun holding workshops on building a system that’s 1,000 times more powerful than today’s top supercomputer (Jaquar’s 2.3 petaflops): an exascale (10^18 calculations per second) system, which would likely arrive around the year 2018.

Exascale systems will be needed for high-resolution climate models, bio energy products and smart grid development as well as fusion energy design.

The Energy Department, which is responsible for funding many of the world’s largest systems, wants two machines somewhere in the 2011-13 timeframe that will reach approximately 10 petaflops.