Ranked: The World’s 10 Most Powerful Supercomputers

The New Diplomat
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In this graphic, we visualize the performance and power consumption of the world’s top 10 supercomputers.

Data and Key Takeaways

The data we used to create this graphic is listed in the table below. Figures come from TOP500’s November 2024 ranking.

Country System Manufacturer Hardware supplier Max Performance
(PFlop/s)
Power
(kW)
🇺🇸 US El Capitan HP Enterprise AMD 1,742 29,581
🇺🇸 US Frontier HP Enterprise AMD 1,353 24,607
🇺🇸 US Aurora HP Enterprise Intel 1,012 38,698
🇺🇸 US Eagle Microsoft Intel
NVIDIA
561
🇮🇹 Italy HPC6 HP Enterprise AMD 478 8,461
🇯🇵 Japan Supercomputer
Fugaku
Fujitsu Fujitsu 442 29,899
🇨🇭 Switzerland Alps HP Enterprise NVIDIA 435 7,124
🇫🇮 Finland LUMI HP Enterprise AMD 380 7,107
🇮🇹 Italy Leonardo EVIDEN Intel
NVIDIA
241 7,494
🇺🇸 US Tuolumne HP Enterprise AMD 208 3,387

This ranking highlights America’s position as a global leader in computing power. For instance, the top three supercomputers are located in the U.S., and all of them are classified as exascale systems.

This is a significant change from the 2021 ranking, in which Japan’s Supercomputer Fugaku held the top spot.

The winner of this year’s ranking is El Capitan, which became operational in 2024 and is the third exascale system deployed by the United States.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, El Capitan was manufactured by HP Enterprise Cray and features an unknown number of AMD Instict MI300A accelerated processing units (APUs).

What’s An Exascale Computer?

An exascale computer is capable of performing at least 1 exaflop (1 quintillion operations per second).

Note that in this ranking, performance is measured in petaflops (1 quadrillion). 1,000 petaflops is equal to 1 exaflop.

In realistic terms, exascale computers can handle massive datasets and solve problems at unprecedented speed. Use cases include:

  • Simulating molecular interactions
  • Predicting climate change
  • Advancing nuclear research
China’s Exascale Systems Remain a Mystery

Since 2021, reports have suggested that China does indeed have its own exascale systems, but is simply withholding information about them from global rankings such as the TOP500.

It’s a well known situation that China has these computers, and they have been operating for a while. They have not run the benchmarks, but [the community has] a general idea of their architectures and capabilities.
JACK DONGARRA, CO-FOUNDER OF TOP500

China’s silence is likely related to its geopolitical strategy. Publicly announcing it has built its own exascale systems could result in further U.S. trade restrictions.

Credit: Visual Capitalist

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