China starts developing new-era exascale supercomputer.[Photo/Xinhua]

WASHINGTON -?A 12-member team of Chinese researchers on Thursday won the 2016 ACM Gordon Bell prize, the top award in the field of supercomputing.

This is the first time that Chinese researchers have been awarded the honor.

"It's a historic breakthrough," said Haohuan Fu, deputy director of the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi and one of the team members.

Fu and his colleagues were honored for developing a method for calculating atmospheric dynamics that could be used to improve global climate models as well as weather predictions.

The award was presented at the 2016 Supercomputing Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Gordon Bell Prize, awarded each year at the annual supercomputing conference, was established in 1987 by Gordon Bell, a pioneer in high-performance and parallel computing.

It tracks the progress of parallel computing and rewards innovation in applying high performance computing to challenges in science, engineering, and large-scale data analytics.