AMD EPYC-Based HPC Cluster Breaks the “Exascale Barrier”

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced that their supercomputer powered by AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators is the first system to break the exascale barrier (i.e., calculating at least 10¹⁸ FLOPS). Moreover, the Frontier TDS – HPE Cray EX235a supercomputer took the number one spot on the Top500 for June 2022, making it the most powerful supercomputer in the world. The #1 ranked system clocked in at 1.102 exaflops of performance.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced that their supercomputer powered by AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators is the first system to break the exascale barrier (i.e., calculating at least 10¹⁸ FLOPS). Moreover, the Frontier TDS – HPE Cray EX235a supercomputer took the number one spot on the Top500 for June 2022, making it the most powerful supercomputer in the world. The #1 ranked system clocked in at 1.102 exaflops of performance.

Powered by the latest HPE Cray EX235a architecture and outfitted with AMD EPYC 64C 2GHz processors, this first true exascale machine features 8,730,112 total cores and a power efficiency rating of 52.23 gigaflops/watt. The number one HPC spot in the previous two years was held by the Fugaku system at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science located in Kobe, Japan

Frontier TDS – HPE Cray EX235a Specifications

Manufacturer:	HPE
Cores:	8,730,112
Processor:	AMD Optimized 3rd Generation EPYC 64C 2GHz
Interconnect:	Slingshot-11
Installation Year:	2021
Performance
Linpack Performance (Rmax)	1,102.00 PFlop/s
Theoretical Peak (Rpeak)	1,685.65 PFlop/s
Nmax	24,440,832
Power Consumption
Power:	21,100.00 kW (Submitted)
Power Measurement Level:	3
Software
Operating System:	HPE Cray OS

An AMD-based system also took the top spot on the Green500 (a list that ranks the world’s best systems in power efficiency/performance), boasting 62.68 gigaflops/watt power efficiency.

Other AMD EPYC and AMD Instinct MI200-based systems that made the lists include the CSC LUMI supercomputer, which ranked 3rd place on both the Top500 and Green500 lists from June 2022. This system measures 152 petaflops of performance and 51.63 gigaflops/watt in power efficiency. In addition, the Adastra system at GENCI-CINES ranked 10th and 4th on the Top500 list and Green500 list, respectively.

Overall, AMD powers the four most power-efficient computers on the planet and has eight of the top 10, and 17 of the top 20. That’s quite a statement from the semiconductor giant.

Here’s a quick rundown of other highlights from the Top500 list:

• AMD is powering two of the three fastest supercomputers in the world – Frontier, and LUMI
• AMD powers half of the top 10 fastest supercomputers
• There are 94 AMD systems on the list, a 95% year-over-year increase
• More than half of the 38 new systems on the Top500 are powered by AMD
• This is the first appearance of AMD Instinct accelerators, with seven systems on the list, accounting for a total of 1.329 exaflops of performance. This almost equals the 1.337 exaflops of performance of all other accelerated systems on the list, combined.

Green500 – June 2022

Top500 – June 2022

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