HPE’s El Capitan Named World’s Quickest Supercomputer

El Capitan, the record-breaking supercomputer constructed by HPE and housed on the Lawrence Livermore Nationwide Laboratory in California, has formally claimed the title of the world’s quickest supercomputer, in accordance with the newest TOP500 rankings.

The distinguished listing, monitoring supercomputing milestones since 1993, underscores El Capitan’s groundbreaking achievement.

“El Capitan marks one other vital milestone in exascale supercomputing, bringing monumental efficiency, power effectivity, and the capabilities to speed up AI-driven scientific discovery and make unbelievable breakthroughs to strengthen nationwide safety and unlock new alternatives in renewable power,” Trish Damkroger, senior vice chairman and normal supervisor, HPC & AI Infrastructure Options, mentioned in a press release.

El Capitan powers authorities scientific analysis, together with nuclear testing simulations

The TOP500 workforce clocked El Capitan at a Linpack rating of 1.742 EFlop/s, a standardized measure of how rapidly the system can resolve a posh sequence of linear equations.

El Capitan helps the work of the U.S. Nationwide Nuclear Security Administration, together with analysis on 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 AMD 4th-generation EPYC processors, the Cray Slingshot 11 community 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 58.89 gigaflops efficiency per watt.

“El Capitan’s introduction continues the potential development wanted to maintain our stockpile with out returning to explosive nuclear testing,” Jill Hruby, Division of Power undersecretary for nuclear safety and NNSA administrator, mentioned in a press release.

In Might 2024, El Capitan appeared on the TOP500 listing at quantity 46.

SEE: Dell provided new infrastructure for enterprise AI applications on the worldwide supercomputing convention held this week.

Prime 5 Supercomputers of 2024

Behind El Capitan, listed below are essentially the most highly effective computer systems on the earth, according to the TOP500 list:

The Frontier system at Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory in Tennessee

Frontier elevated its exaflops to 1.353 Eflop/s on the November listing, however that was nonetheless inadequate to forestall El Capitan from knocking Frontier down from the highest spot. Frontier makes use of 9,066,176 cores and Cray’s Slingshot 11 community. It’s used to review supplies, power, nuclear energy, and genetics, amongst different scientific analysis.

The Aurora system at Argonne Management Computing Facility in Illinois

Aurora is constructed on HPE’s Cray EX — Intel Exascale Compute blade with Intel Xeon CPU Max Sequence Processors and Intel Knowledge Heart GPU Max Sequence accelerators. It maintained its benchmark rating from earlier this yr, at 1.012 Exaflop/s. The lab makes use of the supercomputer for scientific analysis, together with local weather, supplies, fusion power, and power storage.

The Eagle system from Microsoft Azure

Eagle is a cloud-based supercomputer cluster provided by Microsoft Azure. Eagle makes use of 14,400 NVIDIA H100 GPUs and Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids processors to succeed in a benchmark rating of 561.2 PFlop/s.

The HPC6 system at Eni S.p.A middle in Ferrera Erbognone, Italy

HPC6 joined the highest 5 this yr, bringing 477.90 PFlop/s from its home with the Eni power firm in Italy. HPC6 can now declare the title of the quickest system in Europe. TOP500 notes HPC6 makes use of the identical structure as Frontier.

AMD and Intel processors energy the highest 10

TOP500 exhibits AMD and Intel are one of the best selections for the world’s strongest supercomputers. 5 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 appears to be the most well-liked selection for connectivity, utilized by seven of 10.