Up close with the world's largest supercomputer
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Photos: Ina Fried/Axios
The world's most powerful supercomputer was officially dedicated in California Thursday, with the CEOs of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and AMD on hand to celebrate their handiwork.
Why it matters: El Capitan — as the $600 million supercomputer is known — will handle an array of classified tasks aimed at securing the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons and run a variety of other unspecified simulations.
Zoom in: El Capitan and a smaller sibling designed for nonclassified work sit inside a large data center inside Lawrence Livermore National Labs, roughly 30 miles northeast of Silicon Valley.
- That smaller sibling, Tuolumne, is similar in design to El Capitan, but just one-tenth the size. It's still powerful enough to rank 10th among the world's most powerful supercomputers.
- Reporters on Thursday were able to get a peek at the giant computer, which has been running test code since last year.
While not solely designed for AI work, officials expect the two computers to make significant use of the emerging technology.
- "While we're still exploring the full role AI will play, there's no doubt that it is going to improve our ability to do research and development that we need," said Bradley Wallin, a deputy director of the Livermore lab.
By the numbers: El Capitan is capable of peak performance of 2.79 exaflops, or 2.79 quintillion calculations per second.
- That's equivalent to the processing power of about 1 million of today's high-end smartphones working simultaneously.
- Its 87 computer racks and accompanying infrastructure weigh 1.3 million pounds. That's about the same as four blue whales or 100 African elephants.
- El Capitan uses 30 megawatts of power, drawn from the local grid, though the lab did have to arrange for more power to be concentrated in the data center that houses it.
Zoom out: For HPE, El Capitan is yet another notch in its belt. The company, which acquired supercomputer maker Cray in 2019, is also responsible for supercomputers at Oak Ridge and Argonne labs, the next-largest such computers.
- For AMD, it's another sign of just how far the chipmaker's fortunes have risen. Long Intel's distant rival, AMD has not only grabbed a significant share of PCs and servers, but emerged as a key player in supercomputing.
- AMD also aspires to grab a larger share of the AI training market from Nvidia.
- "I'm smiling from ear to ear," CEO Lisa Su told reporters on Thursday.
The big picture: Both Su and HPE CEO Antonio Neri said the knowledge gained building El Capitan will directly benefit their AI efforts.
- "There is complete leverage," Neri said, noting the marked similarity between machines like El Capitan and those used to train AI systems.
- "It's basically the same building blocks, as Antonio said, configured in a different way," Su said.
