AMD powers world’s fastest supercomputer, again

The El Capitan supercomputer, housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), powered by AMD Instinct MI300A APUs and built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), is now the fastest supercomputer in the world with a High-Performance Linpack (HPL) score of 1.742 exaflops based on the latest Top500 list. Both El Capitan and the Frontier system at Oak Ridge National Lab claimed numbers 18 and 22, respectively, on the Green500 list, showcasing the impressive capabilities of the AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct GPUs to drive leadership performance and energy efficiency for HPC workloads.

“We are thrilled to see El Capitan become the second AMD powered supercomputer to break the exaflop barrier and become the fastest supercomputer in the world. Showcasing the incredible performance and efficiency of the AMD Instinct MI300 APUs, this groundbreaking machine is a testament to the dedicated work between AMD, LLNL and HPE,” said Forrest Norrod, Executive Vice President and General Manager, AMD. “At AMD, we are driving the future of computing with leadership performance and capabilities that will continue to define the convergence of HPC and AI for years to come.” 

"El Capitan is crucial to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s core mission and significantly bolsters our ability to perform large ensembles of high-fidelity 3D simulations that address the intricate scientific challenges facing the mission," said Rob Neely, Director of LLNL’s Advanced Simulation and Computing program. 

Bronis R. de Supinski, LLNL’s Chief Technology Officer for Livermore Computing adds, "Leveraging the AMD Instinct MI300A APUs, we've built a system that was once unimaginable, pushing the absolute boundaries of computational performance while maintaining exceptional energy efficiency. With AI becoming increasingly prevalent in our field, El Capitan allows us to integrate AI with our traditional simulation and modelling workloads, opening new avenues for discovery across various scientific disciplines."

AMD – powering HPC and AI

AMD compute engines continue to power the most important supercomputers and deliver quality performance for technical computing for enterprises and national laboratories around the world. 

The latest AMD EPYC 9005 Series processors are the best server CPUs for enterprise, AI and Cloud, providing up to 37% better generational IPC performance for HPC and AI workloads. These processors also provide up to 3.9X faster time to insights compared to the competition for science and HPC applications that solve the world’s most challenging problems. 

AMD Instinct accelerators provide leadership performance for the data centre, at any scale – from AI solutions to Exascale-class supercomputers. The AMD Instinct MI300X and MI325X accelerators enable leadership AI performance and memory capabilities, while the AMD Instinct MI300A APU puts CPU and GPU cores, and stacked memory together into a single package, enabling new levels of efficiency and performance for HPC and AI workloads. 

Additionally, AMD EPYC Processors and AMD Instinct accelerators are being used to power many new supercomputing and AI projects and deployments including: 

• Eni, the Italian energy company, recently announced the HPC 6 supercomputer powered by AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs. HPC 6 is one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers dedicated to industrial applications and is now the fifth fastest supercomputer in the world
• The University of Paderborn is in the process of taking delivery and installing a new supercomputer powered by the latest 5th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs
• Sigma2 AS will replace two of three nationally owned supercomputers in Norway with an HPE Cray Supercomputing EX system powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs. When fully installed, this supercomputer is expected to be the fastest system in Norway
• IBM and AMD have announced a collaboration to deploy AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators as a service on IBM Cloud. This offering, expected to be available in the first half of 2025, aims to enhance performance and power efficiency for Gen AI models such as high-performance computing applications for enterprise clients. The collaboration will also enable support for AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators within IBM’s watsonx AI and data platform, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI inferencing support
• AMD Instinct MI300A APUs will also power a next-generation supercomputer system for Japan’s National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST). The system, built by NEC Corporation, will use 280 AMD Instinct MI300A APUs to drive AI and scientific research for the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology, and the National Institute for Fusion Science

Leading the exascale era

As the only company that powers multiple exascale supercomputers, AMD is continuing to drive performance and energy efficiency leadership for HPC installations around the world.

El Capitan, the world’s most powerful supercomputer and the first exascale-class machine for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) stands as the premiere computing resource for the NNSA Tri-Labs – LLNL, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. It will be used to advance scientific discovery and national security, providing the vast computational power necessary to ensure the safety, security and reliability of the nation's nuclear deterrent without testing. This state-of-the-art system marks a monumental leap forward in HPC, enabling unprecedented modelling and simulation capabilities essential for NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program that certifies the aging nuclear stockpile, and other critical nuclear security missions, such as non-proliferation and counterterrorism.  

LLNL and the other NNSA Tri-Labs are also using El Capitan and its companion system, Tuolumne, to drive AI and machine learning-assisted data analysis, further propelling LLNL’s AI-driven goals of creating scientific models that are fast, accurate and capable of quantifying uncertainty in their predictions. El Capitan will apply AI to high energy density problems such as inertial confinement fusion research, while Tuolumne will be used for unclassified open science applications including climate modelling, biosecurity/drug discovery, and earthquake modelling.

Beyond El Capitan, AMD and HPE also power the first exascale supercomputer, Frontier. Housed at Oak Ridge National Lab and powered by AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs, Frontier is the second fastest computer in the world with 1.35 exaflops of performance. Frontier continues to enable researchers to tackle complex scientific problems, from climate modelling and biomedical research to training large language models, further demonstrating its significant contribution to advancing scientific discovery and fuelling breakthroughs in AI.

These systems provide immense computational power that significantly contribute to a wide range of research, including materials science, climate modelling and AI model development. By empowering researchers across diverse fields and fuelling the development of AI models, El Capitan and Frontier are shaping the future of science and technology and enabling solutions to address critical issues across the globe, underscoring the commitment at AMD to provide the high-performance computing resources necessary to power the next generation of scientific discovery and innovation.