The world’s fastest supercomputer, El Capitan, is now operational. It was officially launched at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The $600 million system will handle classified tasks, including securing the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Performance and capabilities
El Capitan reached 1.742 exaFLOPS in the High-Performance Linpack test. This makes it the fastest supercomputer, surpassing Frontier, which reached 1.353 exaFLOPS. It has a peak performance of 2.746 exaFLOPS, making it the third exascale system ever built.
The supercomputer is powered by over 11 million processing cores. It contains 44,544 AMD MI300A units, each with 128GB of high-bandwidth memory. This allows it to perform complex calculations efficiently while using less power.
Purpose and future applications
El Capitan was developed under the U.S. Department of Energy’s CORAL-2 program. It replaces the Sierra supercomputer, which was the 14th most powerful in recent rankings. Research will focus on national security, material discovery and high-energy physics.
With its immense computing power, El Capitan is expected to enhance scientific research. It will help scientists analyse data faster and improve technological advancements.
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