Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s El Capitan supercomputer has achieved an unprecedented triple crown in high-performance computing while taking the highest spot on three major global benchmarks.
Powered by over 11 million cores and over 44,000 AMD processing units, the Exascale machine delivers 1.742 Exaflops on the benchmark of industry-standard standards, while setting new records in AI-Assiscess coppering and memory-intensive workloads.
This achievement marks an important milestone in the leadership of supercomputing in the United States. El Capitan maintains its position as the world’s fastest supercomputer on the famous Top 500 list, while ranking first in two other rankings, which can better reflect the real-world scientific applications.
Exceeded original speed
What makes this achievement unique is not only the original computing power, but also the versatility. El Capitan is the first to use a high-performance conjugate gradient (HPCG) benchmark of 17.41 PETAFLOPS, an indicator that measures the performance of complex, memory-intensive computing typical in actual scientific research.
The system also ranks first on the HPL-MXP benchmark, delivering amazing 16.7 exaflops using hybrid semen AI technology. This performance demonstrates the ability of machines to process hybrid workloads that increasingly define modern scientific computing.
“This is more than just a Livermore victory—it is a future victory for national security, NNSA enterprises and AI-assisted scientific discovery,” said Bronis R. de Supinski, chief technology officer at Livermore Computing. “The delivery of El Capitan is being designed exactly as designed: fast, flexible and optimized to meet the world’s most demanding workload.”
Exascale Elite
El Capitan joins exclusive clubs with only three proven Exascale supercomputers worldwide, all operated by the U.S. Department of Energy. These rankings reaffirm the dominance of the U.S. in high performance computing, with Oak Ridge National Laboratory ranked second in the boundaries and Argon National Laboratory’s Aurora ranked third.
But what makes Exascale calculations so important? These machines can perform more than one trillion calculations per second, a whole new field of scientific simulations from modeling nuclear weapons to accelerating drug discovery.
El Capitan’s technical specifications:
- More than 11 million processing cores
- Over 44,000 AMD Instinct MI300A APU
- 1.742 Exaflops peak performance
- 58.9 Energy efficiency per watt
Energy efficiency is important
In addition to pure performance, El Capitan also proves that huge computing power does not have to be achieved at environmental costs. The system earned 26th place on the Green500 list of the most energy-efficient supercomputers, 58.9 Gigabits per watt.
As supercomputers grow in size and capabilities, this efficiency becomes crucial. The ability to balance computing power with energy consumption will determine the sustainability of future Exascale systems.
Livermore ecosystem
Perhaps most notably, Livermore now runs 500 more systems than any other site in the world. The lab’s 14 different machines have gained spots on the latest rankings, creating an unparalleled ecosystem of computing resources.
The roster includes not only El Capitan, but Tuolumne, an uncategorized companion system that ranks 12th in the world. Based on the same AMD processing unit, Tuolumne is a key platform for open scientific applications, from AI-assisted fusion research to seismic modeling and drug discovery.
Depth extends to the title machine. Sierra ranks 20, while systems like Rzadams, Lassen and various computing clusters fill out the rankings, each with professional roles in the laboratory’s research tasks.
National Security Calculation
El Capitan’s main mission involves supporting the National Nuclear Safety Administration’s stock management program to ensure that the U.S. nuclear deterrence remains safe, safe and reliable without underground testing. The system performs critical computational and modeling tasks for three NNSA’s national laboratories: Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia.
This work requires not only speed, but also reliability and security – the factors that affect supercomputer design go far beyond benchmark performance. The system must handle confidential workloads while maintaining flexibility in supporting diverse scientific applications.
As scientific computing increasingly relies on AI-assisted approaches and complex simulations, El Capitan’s three-base benchmark strengths suggest that future supercomputing leadership will depend on as much versatility as original computing power.
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