El Capitan bumps Frontier to claim world’s fastest supercomputer title

Here’s a breakdown of specific details for the 10 fastest supercomputer systems on the TOP500 list for November 2024:

No. 1: El Capitan

• Location: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.
• HPL score: 1.742 Exaflop/s
• System model: HPE Cray EX255a
• Processors: AMD 4th generation EPYC processors with 24 cores at 1.8 GHz and AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators
• Total core count: 11,039,616
• Interconnect: Slingshot 11
• Energy efficiency: 58.89 Gigaflops/watt

No. 2: Frontier

• Location: Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
• HPL score: 1.353 Exaflop/s
• System model: HPE Cray EX235a
• Processors: 3rd Gen AMD EPYC CPUs optimized for HPC and AI with AMD Instinct 250X accelerators
• Total core count: 9,066,176
• Interconnect: Slingshot 11
• Energy efficiency: 54.98 Gigaflops/watt

No. 3: Aurora 

• Location: Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, Argonne, Ill.
• HPL score: 1.012 Exaflop/s
• System model: HPE Cray EX – Intel Exascale Compute Blades
• Processors: Intel Xeon CPU Max Series processors and Intel Data Center GPU Max Series accelerators
• Total core count: 9,264,128
• Interconnect: Slingshot 11
• Energy efficiency: 26.15 Gigaflops/watt

No. 4: Eagle

• Location: Microsoft Azure cluster
• HPL score: 561 Petaflop/s
• System model: Microsoft NDv5
• Processors: Xeon Platinum 8480C processors and Nvidia H100 accelerators
• Total core count: 2,073,600
• Interconnect: Nvidia Infiniband NDR
• Energy efficiency: unknown

No. 5: HPC6

• Location: Eni S.p.A center in Ferrera Erbognone in Italy
• HPL score: 477.9 Petaflop/s
• System model: HPE Cray EX235a
• Processors: 3rd Gen AMD EPYC CPUs optimized for HPC and AI with AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators
• Total core count: 3,143,520
• Interconnect: Slingshot 11
• Energy efficiency: 56.48 Gigaflops/watt

No. 6: Fugaku

• Location: RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) in Kobe, Japan
• HPL score: 442 Petaflop/s
• System model: Supercomputer Fugaku, Fujitsu cluster
• Processors: A64FX 48C 2.2GHz
• Total core count: 7,630,848
• Interconnect: proprietary Tofu interconnect D
• Energy efficiency: 15.42 Gigaflops/watt

No. 7: Alps 

• Location: Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Switzerland
• HPL score: 434.9 Petaflop/s
• System model: HPE Cray EX254n
• Processors: Nvidia Grace 72C 3.1GHz and Nvidia GH200 Superchip
• Total core count: 2,121,600
• Interconnect: Slingshot 11
• Energy efficiency: 61.05 Gigaflops/watt

No. 8: LUMI 

• Location: EuroHPC center at CSC in Finland
• HPL score: 380 Petaflop/s
• System model: HPE Cray EX235a
• Processors: AMD Optimized 3rd Generation EPYC 64C 2GHz and AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators
• Total core count: 2,752,704
• Interconnect: Slingshot 11
• Energy efficiency: 53.43 Gigaflops/watt

No. 9: Leonardo 

• Location: EuroHPC site in CINECA, Italy
• HPL score: 241.2 Petaflop/s
• System model: Atos BullSequana XH2000
• Processors: Xeon Platinum 8358 32C 2.6GHz processors and Nvidia A100 SXM4 64 GB accelerators
• Total core count: 1,824,768
• Interconnect: Quad-rail Nvidia HDR100 Infiniband
• Energy efficiency: 32.19 Gigaflops/watt

No. 10: Tuolumne 

• Location: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Calif.
• HPL score: 208.1 Petaflop/s
• System model: HPE Cray EX255a
• Processors: AMD 4th Gen EPYC 24C 1.8GHz and AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators
• Total core count: 1,161,216
• Interconnect: Slingshot 11
• Energy efficiency: 61.45 Gigaflops/watt

TOP500 history and highlights

The first iteration of the TOP500 list was created for a small conference in Germany in June 1993. The authors decided to continue compiling the list, which is now a twice-yearly event. Some highlights from the November 2024 TOP500 list include:

Nvidia accelerators: A total of 211 systems on the list are using accelerator/co-processor technology, up from 194 six months ago. Of these, 72 use Nvidia Ampere chips, 60 use Nvidia Hopper, and 33 systems use Nvidia Volta.

Intel vs. AMD: Intel continues to provide the processors for the largest share (61.8%) of TOP500 systems, down from 63% six months ago. Meanwhile, 162 (32.4%) of the systems in the current list use AMD processors, up from 31.2% six months ago.

Geographic distribution: The US is home to 173 of the top 500 systems. China has 63, Germany has 41, Japan has 34, and France has 24 systems. Rounding out the countries with the highest numbers of TOP500 systems are the UK (14), South Korea (13), Italy (13), Netherlands (10), Canada (9) and Brazil (9). The TOP500 authors made this observation:

“While China and the United States were once again the countries that earned the most entries on the entire TOP500 list, it would appear that China is not participating to the extent that it once did. The United States added two systems to the list, bringing its total number of systems to 173. China once again dropped its number of representative machines on the list from 80 to 63 systems. Like last list, China did not introduce any new machines to the TOP500 list. Germany is quickly catching up to China, with 41 machines on the list.”