World's Fastest Supercomputer Can Simulate Nukes
The United States has unveiled El Capitan, the world’s fastest supercomputer, at the SC Conference for supercomputing in Atlanta, Georgia. Designed to maintain the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, El Capitan marks a major milestone in computational power.
A New Era of Simulated Testing
Following the 1965 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, the U.S. shifted from live nuclear tests to advanced simulations managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). El Capitan, housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, can perform over 2,700 quadrillion operations per second (2.7 exaFLOPS), surpassing the previous record-holder, Frontier. Alongside it, the NNSA introduced Toulumne, an unclassified supercomputer ranked #10 globally.
Cutting-Edge Applications
El Capitan will:
- Simulate nuclear weapon performance and aging.
- Support inertial confinement fusion research.
- Train artificial intelligence to enhance modeling and simulations.
Advanced Technology
Built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, El Capitan uses 44,544 AMD MI300a chips that combine CPU and GPU power, reducing simulation times from months to days. Luc Peterson of Lawrence Livermore noted, “Our time to science is shrinking.”
The Future of Supercomputing
NNSA officials, including Thuc Hoang, confirmed plans for even more advanced systems. El Capitan sets a new benchmark in computational science, underscoring its critical role in securing the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
