AMD is powering the world’s fastest supercomputer on the Top500 list.
The El Capitan supercomputer, housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), is powered by AMD Instinct MI300A APUs and built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). It 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,” says Forrest Norrod, executive vice-president and GM of 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.”
Rob Neely, director of LLNL’s Advanced Simulation and Computing program, comments: “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.”
Bronis 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 modeling workloads, opening new avenues for discovery across various scientific disciplines.”
AMD compute engines continue to power the most important supercomputers and deliver exceptional 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 center, 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.