The 66th edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was announced today at the SC25 Conference in St Louis, Missouri. The new list reflects continued U.S. leadership in high-performance computing (HPC), historic European milestones, and growing global diversity across architectures and energy-efficient design.
El Capitan Extends Leadership Across Benchmarks
The El Capitan system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) remains the undisputed leader of global HPC. Based on the HPE Cray EX255a architecture, powered by AMD 4th Gen EPYC™ CPUs and AMD Instinct™ MI300A accelerators, El Capitan achieved 1.809 Exaflop/s on the HPL benchmark — a significant remeasurement that further strengthens its position as the fastest computer in the world. El Capitan also dominates the HPCG benchmark, delivering 17.41 HPCG-Petaflop/s, making it the #1 for real-world application performance. On the HPL-MxP mixed-precision benchmark, it recorded 16.7 Exaflop/s, confirming its versatility in AI and data-driven workloads. With 11.34 million cores and an energy efficiency of 60.9 GFlops/Watt, El Capitan exemplifies the current generation of exascale computing.
JUPITER: Europe Joins the Exascale Era
Europe reached a major milestone as JUPITER Booster, installed at the EuroHPC/Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany, became the fourth Exascale system in the world and the first outside the United States. Fully installed and operational, JUPITER achieved 1.000 Exaflop/s, marking the arrival of European exascale capability. Built on Eviden’s BullSequana XH3000 direct-liquid-cooled architecture and powered by NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips, it represents Europe’s flagship for scientific and industrial innovation.
Frontier and Aurora Hold Steady at #2 and #3
At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Frontier system retains the #2 position with 1.353 Exaflop/s. Built on the HPE Cray EX235a architecture and powered by AMD EPYC™ CPUs and Instinct™ 250X accelerators, Frontier continues to serve as a cornerstone of DOE’s exascale ecosystem. The Aurora system at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility remains #3 with 1.012 Exaflop/s on HPL. Built with Intel Xeon CPU Max and Intel GPU Max accelerators, Aurora demonstrates Intel’s maturing exascale design. Aurora also ranks second on the HPL-MxP benchmark with 11.6 Exaflop/s, underscoring its balanced AI and HPC performance.
Other Highlights in the TOP10
Microsoft’s Eagle cloud system stays at #5 with 561 Petaflop/s, showcasing cloud-based HPC scalability. Italy’s HPC6 follows at #6 (478 PFlop/s), while Japan’s Fugaku at #7 continues to lead Asia and remains second on the HPCG ranking (16 PFlop/s). Switzerland’s Alps system remains at #8 (435 PFlop/s), followed by Finland’s LUMI (#9, 380 PFlop/s) and Italy’s Leonardo (#10, 241 PFlop/s), both part of the EuroHPC initiative.
Green500: Efficiency at the Forefront
Energy efficiency remains a core measure of progress. The Green500 ranking highlights the rise of NVIDIA Grace Hopper-based systems, which dominate the top three positions.
- KAIROS at CALMIP/University of Toulouse (France) — 73.28 GFlops/Watt, achieving 3.05 PFlop/s.
- ROMEO-2025 at ROMEO HPC Center (France) — 70.9 GFlops/Watt, delivering 9.86 PFlop/s.
- Levante GPU Extension at DKRZ (Germany) — 69.43 GFlops/Watt, reaching 6.75 PFlop/s.
All three systems share the BullSequana XH3000 design with Grace Hopper Superchips and NVIDIA NDR200 InfiniBand interconnects, highlighting the balance between energy efficiency and computing performance.
HPL-MxP: Mixed-Precision Powerhouses
The HPL-MxP benchmark emphasizes mixed-precision calculations crucial for AI and scientific simulation. The 2025 list confirms U.S. DOE leadership with El Capitan, Aurora, and Frontier occupying the top three positions, followed by JUPITER in fourth. Japan’s CHIE-4 system at Softbank ranks fifth with 3.3 Exaflop/s, demonstrating global diversification of HPC innovation.
Global HPC Landscape
The 66th TOP500 showcases four operational exascale systems — three in the United States and one in Europe — and an expanding footprint of advanced pre-exascale machines worldwide. The continued evolution of the list reflects rapid architectural innovation, growing emphasis on mixed-precision computing, and the industry’s steady march toward sustainable exascale performance.
About the TOP500 List
The first version of what became today’s TOP500 list started as an exercise for a small conference in Germany in June 1993. A second version of the list was compiled in November 1993 for the SC93 conference. Comparing both editions to see how things had changed the authors realized how valuable this information was and continued to compile statistics about the market for HPC systems based on it. The TOP500 is now a much-anticipated, much-watched and much-debated twice-yearly event.