(Yicai Global) Sept. 27 -- The Guizhou provincial government's Science and Technology Department has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with southwestern Gui'an New Area to develop Big Data-related infrastructure for high-performance computing, biomedicine and astronomy, state-owned Xinhua News Agency reported on Sept. 27.

The two parties plan to invest CNY60 million (USD9 million) to develop a national supercomputing center in Gui'an which is capable of achieved computing speeds exceeding one petaflop per second, which will represent the first facility of its kind in western China.

The pair are also investing a further CNY50 million (USD7.5 million) investment to set up a Life Sciences Data Center project in conjunction with the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Biological Sciences. The development will improve the service capacity of biomedical resources in the province through big data applications.

There are also plans to build an Asian regional astronomical facility as part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) large multi-radio telescope project. SKA is an international project to create the world's largest radio telescope. The Guizhou location would be based on the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), located in the province's Pingtang County.

Guizhou Science and Technology Department and Gui'an New Area will look to attract domestic and foreign resources to propel the construction of the aforementioned projects.