El Capitan Verified as World's Fastest Supercomputer

El Capitan, housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has been verified as the world's fastest supercomputer, performing 1.742 quintillion calculations per second. Developed in collaboration with the National Nuclear Security Administration, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and AMD, El Capitan will be used for national security purposes, including maintaining and modernizing the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The machine is more than 20 times faster than its predecessor, Sierra, and is also noted for its energy efficiency, ranking on the Green500 list. It utilizes AMD's MI300A APUs, contributing to its status on the Top500 list of supercomputers. The system will support advanced high-energy-density physics experiments and AI research, with a focus on precision simulations for nuclear safety. El Capitan has overtaken Frontier, the previous leader, which had broken the exascale barrier in 2022.