Supercomputers - ExaFLOPS barrier falls

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500#TOP_500
https://www.ornl.gov/news/frontier-supercomputer-debuts-worlds-fastest-breaking-exascale-barrier
The Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory earned the top ranking today as the world’s fastest on the 59th TOP500 list, with 1.1 exaflops of performance. The system is the first to achieve an unprecedented level of computing performance known as exascale, a threshold of a quintillion calculations per second.

Frontier features a theoretical peak performance of 2 exaflops, or two quintillion calculations per second, making it ten times more powerful than ORNL’s Summit system. The system leverages ORNL’s extensive expertise in accelerated computing and will enable scientists to develop critically needed technologies for the country’s energy, economic and national security, helping researchers address problems of national importance that were impossible to solve just five years ago.
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Orionblamblam said:
sferrin said:
First MegaFLOP computer - IBM 7030 1961
First GigaFLOP computer - Cray 2 1985
First TeraFLOP computer - ASCI Red 1997
First PetaFLOP computer - Roadrunner 2008
First ExaFLOP computer - Frontier 2022

Next up: ZetaFLOP - 2040-ish?
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Surprisingly linear:

View attachment 687364
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I remember the Cray 2 from high school because in those days it was the computer everything was compared to. "The ATF will have a computer as fast as the Cray 2", for example. Then, in the early days of the modern internet, I discovered the Top 500 Supercomputers list and saw that ASCI Red topped the charts. (I remember it because of the unique name.) Now here we are with Frontier a million times faster than ASCI Red and a billion times faster than a Cray 2.

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Forest Green said:
The link in sferrin's earlier post said Zetaflops by 2027, so maybe before 2040.
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First MegaFLOP computer - IBM 7030 1961
First GigaFLOP computer - Cray 2 1985
Gap: 24 years
First TeraFLOP computer - ASCI Red 1997
Gap:12 years
First PetaFLOP computer - Roadrunner 2008
Gap: 11 years
First ExaFLOP computer - Frontier 2022
Gap: 14 years

Based on that, the next step, ZetaFLOP, would be *about* 12 years from the last, or 2034-ish. Getting there by 2027 would mean it only took 5 years, a substantial acceleration from the existing trend.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Forest Green said:
The link in sferrin's earlier post said Zetaflops by 2027, so maybe before 2040.
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First MegaFLOP computer - IBM 7030 1961
First GigaFLOP computer - Cray 2 1985
Gap: 24 years
First TeraFLOP computer - ASCI Red 1997
Gap:12 years
First PetaFLOP computer - Roadrunner 2008
Gap: 11 years
First ExaFLOP computer - Frontier 2022
Gap: 14 years

Based on that, the next step, ZetaFLOP, would be *about* 12 years from the last, or 2034-ish. Getting there by 2027 would mean it only took 5 years, a substantial acceleration from the existing trend.
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Depends how many nodes you use though. You could theoretically do 1 Zetaflop now, but you would need a shed load of CPUs and GPUs.
 
https://insidehpc.com/2024/02/nvidia-reveals-eos-supercomputer-4600-h100-gpus-for-18-ai-exaflops/https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-an-exaflop/
*Just a caveat. This is not proper FP64 Exaflops, this is AI doing it's thing to determine what is the correct precision (FP64, FP32, FP16 or FP8) to use for the current task. This makes sense, because there's no point in say putting '1 x 2' in as an FP64 operation.

That said if 18.4 AI Exaflops equated to 121 Petaflops, 645 AI Exaflops may well be equal to 4.2 Exaflops.

https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/2023/11/
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Looks like China has the fastest again.

https://top500.org/news/lineshine-debuts-no-1-top500-enters-new-global-exascale-era/
HAMBURG, Germany — June 23, 2026 — The 67th edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was announced today at the ISC 2026 conference in Hamburg, Germany. LineShine, a previously unlisted system installed in China, debuts at No. 1, displacing El Capitan as the world’s most powerful supercomputer as measured by the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark. The new list also reflects continued depth in U.S. and European exascale capability, a new entrant in Italy’s HPC fleet, and unchanged leadership atop the Green500 energy-efficiency ranking.
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Five Systems Now Cross the Exascale Threshold​

LineShine’s debut increases the number of systems sustaining more than one exaflop/s on HPL from four to five and, for the first time, places exascale systems across Asia, North America, and Europe simultaneously.

RankSystemSiteCountryHPL (Exaflop/s)
1LineShineNational Supercomputer Center, ShenzhenChina2.198
2El CapitanLawrence Livermore National LaboratoryUnited States1.809
3FrontierOak Ridge National LaboratoryUnited States1.353
4AuroraArgonne National LaboratoryUnited States1.012
5JUPITER BoosterJülich Supercomputing CentreGermany1.000
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Not for long though. Discovery is due to hit 8.5 exaflops.
https://old.chipsandcheese.com/2025...mi430xs-fp64-and-the-discovery-supercomputer/
https://www.ornl.gov/news/doe-opens-bids-construct-ornls-next-generation-supercomputer
 
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