El Capitan achieves top spot, Frontier and Aurora follow behind
Nov. 18, 2024

The 64th edition of the TOP500 reveals that El Capitan has achieved the top spot and is officially the third system to reach exascale computing after Frontier and Aurora. Both systems have since moved down to No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively. Additionally, new systems have found their way onto the Top 10.


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The Influence of HPC-ers: Setting the Standard for What’s “Cool”
Jan. 16, 2025

A look back to supercomputing at the turn of the century

When I first attended the Supercomputing (SC) conferences back in the early 2000s as an IBMer working in High Performance Computing (HPC), it was obvious this conference was intended for serious computer science researchers and industries singularly focused on pushing the boundaries of computing. Linux was still in its infancy. I vividly remember having to re-compile kernels with newly released drivers every time there was a new server that came to market just so I could get the system to PXE boot over the network. But there was one …


The Evolution, Convergence and Cooling of AI & HPC Gear
Nov. 7, 2024

Years ago, when Artificial Intelligence (AI) began to emerge as a potential technology to be harnessed as a powerful tool to change the way the world works, organizations began to kick the AI tires by exploring it’s potential to enhance their research or business. However, to get started with AI, neural networks needed to be created, data sets trained, and microprocessors were needed that could perform matrix-multiplication calculations ideally suited to perform these computationally demanding tasks. Enter the accelerator.


News Feed

Why Tier 0 Is a Game-Changer for GPU Storage

In tech, you’re either forging new paths or stuck in traffic. Tier 0 doesn’t just clear the road — it builds the autobahn. It obliterates inefficiencies, crushes bottlenecks, and unleashes the true power of GPUs. The MLPerf1.0 benchmark has made one thing clear: Tier 0 isn’t incremental improvement—it’s a high-speed revolution. I was at SC24 in Atlanta, talking with ....

The post Why Tier 0 Is a Game-Changer for GPU Storage appeared first on High-Performance Computing News Analysis | insideHPC.

Quantum: QuEra Completes $230M Financing from Google, SoftBank and Others

Boston – February 11, 2025 – QuEra Computing, a neutral-atom quantum computing, today announced it has successfully completed a financing of more than $230 million. The funds will be used to accelerate the development and production of large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers, reinforcing the company’s position at the forefront of quantum innovation. The investment comes from […]

The post Quantum: QuEra Completes $230M Financing from Google, SoftBank and Others appeared first on High-Performance Computing News Analysis | insideHPC.

Intel Datacenter Chief Departs To Run Nokia – Now What?

After only a little more than a year of running Intel’s Data Center and AI group – which is probably about as much fun right now as falling down the stairs – Justin Hotard has departed the chip maker to become the next chief executive officer of Nokia, which interestingly enough has a renewed interest in building cloud networks and making money at that.

Intel Datacenter Chief Departs To Run Nokia – Now What? was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Amazon Will Spend Nearly A Year Of AWS Revenue On AI Investments

There is a bit of AI spending one-upmanship going on among the hyperscalers and cloud builders – and now the foundation model builders who are partnering with their new sugar daddies to be able to afford to build vast AI accelerator estates to push the state of the art in model capabilities and intelligence.

Amazon Will Spend Nearly A Year Of AWS Revenue On AI Investments was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

TOP500 News

The Influence of HPC-ers: Setting the Standard for What’s “Cool”
Jan. 16, 2025

A look back to supercomputing at the turn of the century

When I first attended the Supercomputing (SC) conferences back in the early 2000s as an IBMer working in High Performance Computing (HPC), it was obvious this conference was intended for serious computer science researchers and industries singularly focused on pushing the boundaries of computing. Linux was still in its infancy. I vividly remember having to re-compile kernels with newly released drivers every time there was a new server that came to market just so I could get the system to PXE boot over the network. But there was one …


El Capitan achieves top spot, Frontier and Aurora follow behind
Nov. 18, 2024

The 64th edition of the TOP500 reveals that El Capitan has achieved the top spot and is officially the third system to reach exascale computing after Frontier and Aurora. Both systems have since moved down to No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively. Additionally, new systems have found their way onto the Top 10.


The Evolution, Convergence and Cooling of AI & HPC Gear
Nov. 7, 2024

Years ago, when Artificial Intelligence (AI) began to emerge as a potential technology to be harnessed as a powerful tool to change the way the world works, organizations began to kick the AI tires by exploring it’s potential to enhance their research or business. However, to get started with AI, neural networks needed to be created, data sets trained, and microprocessors were needed that could perform matrix-multiplication calculations ideally suited to perform these computationally demanding tasks. Enter the accelerator.


The List

11/2024 Highlights

The 64th edition of the TOP500 reveals that El Capitan has achieved the top spot and is officially the third system to reach exascale computing after Frontier and Aurora. Both systems have since moved down to No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively. Additionally, new systems have found their way onto the Top 10.

The new El Capitan system at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, U.S.A., has debuted as the most powerful system on the list with an HPL score of 1.742 EFlop/s. It has 11,039,616 combined CPU and GPU cores and is based on AMD 4th generation EPYC processors with 24 cores at 1.8GHz and AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators. El Capitan relies on a Cray Slingshot 11 network for data transfer and achieves an energy efficiency of 58.89 Gigaflops/watt. This power efficiency rating helped El Capitan achieve No. 18 on the GREEN500 list as well.

The Frontier system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, U.S.A, has moved down to the No. 2 spot. It has increased its HPL score from 1.206 Eflop/s on the last list to 1.353 Eflop/s on this list. Frontier has also increased its total core count, from 8,699,904 cores on the last list to 9,066,176 cores on this list. It relies on Cray’s Slingshot 11 network for data transfer.

The Aurora system at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility in Illinois, U.S.A, has claimed the No. 3 spot on this TOP500 list. The machine kept its HPL benchmark score from the last list, achieving 1.012 Exaflop/s. Aurora is built by Intel based on the HPE Cray EX – Intel Exascale Compute blade which uses Intel Xeon CPU Max Series Processors and Intel Data Center GPU Max Series accelerators that communicate through Cray’s Slingshot-11 network interconnect.

The Eagle system installed on the Microsoft Azure Cloud in the U.S.A. claimed the No. 4 spot and remains the highest-ranked cloud-based system on the TOP500. It has an HPL score of 561.2 PFlop/s

The only other new system in the TOP 5 is the HPC6 system at No. 5. This machine is installed at Eni S.p.A center in Ferrera Erbognone, Italy and has the same architecture as the No. 2 system Frontier. The HPC6 system at Eni achieved an HPL benchmark of 477.90 PFlop/s and is now the fastest system in Europe.

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