'El Capitan' Ranked Most Powerful Supercomputer In the World (engadget.com)
- Reference: 0175497613
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/19/0012214/el-capitan-ranked-most-powerful-supercomputer-in-the-world
- Source link: https://www.engadget.com/computing/el-capitan-ranked-the-most-powerful-supercomputer-in-the-world-180037304.html
> El Capitan is only the third "exascale" computer, meaning it can perform more than a quintillion calculations in a second. The other two, called Frontier and Aurora, claim the second and third place slots on the TOP500 now. Unsurprisingly, all of these massive machines live within government research facilities: El Capitan is housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Frontier is at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Argonne National Laboratory claims Aurora. [Cray Computing] had a hand in all three systems.
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> El Capitan has more than 11 million combined CPU and GPU cores based on AMD 4th-gen EPYC processors. These 24-core processors are rated at 1.8GHz each and have AMD Instinct M1300A APUs. It's also relatively efficient, as such systems go, squeezing out an estimated 58.89 Gigaflops per watt. If you're wondering what El Capitan is built for, the answer is addressing nuclear stockpile safety, but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/computing/el-capitan-ranked-the-most-powerful-supercomputer-in-the-world-180037304.html
[2] https://top500.org/
Tesla (Score:2)
Tesla claims 400 exaflops, soon to be 1200 exaflops (1.2 zettaflops) [1]https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/04/tesla-has-400-exaflops-of-ai-training-compute.html [nextbigfuture.com].
[1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/04/tesla-has-400-exaflops-of-ai-training-compute.html
The kessel run (Score:3)
It does it in 8 parsnips
Re: (Score:2)
This is a leaderboard based on a specific benchmark, HPL (as mentioned in the summary). Taking the theoretical max of an H100 and multiplying it by how many you bought is a different thing.
Nuclear counterterrorism (Score:3)
> but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism.
What does that mean?
Re: (Score:2)
Presumably that there is some paranoia that bad dudes will get their hands on nukes or , more likely, thermal 'dirty bomb' capacity (Ie a regular bomb that spreads nasty radioactive shit everywhere, ie a bomb packed with spent uranium shit)
I'm not super convinced but the likelyhood of certain rogue states (Iran, NK) leveling up to nuke capable and then outfitting whacko groups with that capacity cant be entirely ruled out.
Re: (Score:2)
> Presumably that there is some paranoia that bad dudes will get their hands on nukes or , more likely, thermal 'dirty bomb' capacity
I'm sure you are right, there are crazy people who want to set of nuclear bombs in populated areas. I'm just not sure how a supercomputer helps with counterterrorism to stop that.
Re: (Score:2)
"Nuclear counterterrorism" was included in the budget request so Congress would approve it.
Congress will often allocate funding for a specific purpose, so a budget request can be streamlined if written to fit that purpose.
Are these computers actually being used for "nuclear counterterrorism"? Of course not.
Beowulf (Score:1)
something
Re: (Score:3)
Ahh the old Slashdot memes, a gentler age
Re: (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia, Slashdot memes YOU!
Yes, but does it run ... (Score:1)
... Linux^H^H^H^H^H [1]El Capitan [wikipedia.org]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_El_Capitan
I wonder if I could borrow it for a bit (Score:2)
I have to think this thing would have a fighting chance of running Flight Simulator 2024 with all the bells and whistles turned to max.
"... estimated 58.89 Gigaflops per watt." (Score:1)
I missed the last Apple event. Apple loves comparing the specs for its latest hardware with that of the competition. What value did it quote for the M4 mini?