El Capitan, the record-breaking supercomputer constructed by HPE and housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, has formally reclaimed the title of the world’s quickest supercomputer, based on the most recent TOP500 rankings.
The prestigious checklist, which has tracked supercomputing milestones since 1993, highlights El Capitan’s groundbreaking achievements.
“El Capitan marks one other important milestone in exascale supercomputing, delivering monumental efficiency, power effectivity, and functionality to speed up AI-driven scientific discovery and make unimaginable breakthroughs to strengthen nationwide safety and unlock new alternatives in renewable power “, Trish Damkroger, senior vp and common supervisor, HPC & AI Infrastructure Solutions, stated in a press release.
El Capitan fuels authorities scientific analysis, together with nuclear take a look at simulations
The TOP500 workforce recorded El Capitan with a Linpack rating of 1,742 EFlop/s, a standardized measure of how rapidly the system can clear up a posh sequence of linear equations.
El Capitan helps the work of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, together with analysis into nuclear weapons and deterrents. The lab additionally makes use of the machine for scientific analysis on power safety, local weather change, energy grid modernization and drug discovery.
The supercomputer makes use of fourth-generation AMD EPYC processors, Cray Slingshot 11 networking for information switch, and a customized storage answer. The world’s primary supercomputer has 11,039,616 mixed CPU and GPU cores. It runs at a efficiency of 58.89 gigaflops per watt.
“The introduction of El Capitan continues the aptitude development wanted to maintain our stockpile with out returning to explosive nuclear testing,” stated Jill Hruby, Department of Energy undersecretary for nuclear safety and NNSA administrator. press release.
In May 2024, El Capitan appeared on the TOP500 checklist at quantity 46.
SEE: Dell supplied new infrastructure for enterprise AI purposes at this week’s International Supercomputing Conference.
The 5 finest supercomputers of 2024
Behind El Capitan, listed here are probably the most highly effective computer systems on the earth, according to the TOP500 list:
The Frontier System at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee
Frontier elevated its exaflops to 1,353 Eflop/s within the November checklist, however that also wasn’t sufficient to cease El Capitan from knocking Frontier off the highest spot. Frontier makes use of 9,066,176 cores and Cray’s Slingshot 11 community. It is used to review supplies, power, nuclear power, and genetics, amongst different scientific analysis.
The Aurora system on the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility in Illinois
Aurora relies on HPE’s Cray EX: Intel Exascale Compute blades with Intel Xeon CPU Max Series processors and Intel Data Center GPU Max Series accelerators. It maintained the reference rating from the start of the 12 months, equal to 1,012 Exaflop/s. The laboratory makes use of the supercomputer for scientific analysis, together with local weather, supplies, fusion power and power storage.
The Microsoft Azure Eagle system
Eagle is a cloud-based supercomputer cluster supplied by Microsoft Azure. Eagle makes use of 14,400 NVIDIA H100 GPUs and Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids processors to attain a benchmark rating of 561.2 PFlop/s.
The HPC6 system on the Eni SpA heart in Ferrera Erbognone, Italy
HPC6 joined the highest 5 this 12 months, bringing 477.90 PFlop/s from its dwelling at power firm Eni in Italy. HPC6 can now declare the title of the quickest system in Europe. TOP500 notes that HPC6 makes use of the identical structure as Frontier.
AMD and Intel processors energy the highest 10
TOP500 proves that AMD and Intel are the most effective decisions for the world’s strongest supercomputers. Five of the highest 10 use AMD processors, whereas three use Intel. The remaining two use NVIDIA or a customized ARM-based processor. The Slingshot-11 interconnect seems to be the most well-liked selection for connectivity, utilized by seven in 10.
