The world’s fastest supercomputer can do in one second what every human on Earth doing math by hand could not finish in 100 years.
How to Play: Guess if the supercomputer on the right is FASTER or SLOWER than the one on the left.
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Top 10 Fastest Supercomputers (TOP500)
Supercomputers are ranked by LINPACK benchmark in PFLOPS (petaflops). 1 PFLOPS = 1 quadrillion floating-point operations per second.
| # | Name | Performance (PFLOPS) | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Frontier (USA) | 1,206 | PFLOPS |
| 2 | Aurora (USA) | 1,012 | PFLOPS |
| 3 | Eagle (Microsoft Azure) | 561 | PFLOPS |
| 4 | HPC6 (Eni, Italy) | 478 | PFLOPS |
| 5 | Fugaku (Japan) | 442 | PFLOPS |
| 6 | LUMI (Finland) | 380 | PFLOPS |
| 7 | Leonardo (Italy) | 241 | PFLOPS |
| 8 | Tuolumne (USA) | 208 | PFLOPS |
| 9 | Summit (USA) | 148 | PFLOPS |
| 10 | MareNostrum 5 (Spain) | 138 | PFLOPS |
Supercomputer Trends
TOP500 has tracked supercomputer rankings biannually since 1993. Frontier (Oak Ridge, USA, 2022) was first to break 1 EFLOPS = 10^18 FLOPS.
China dominated rankings 2013-2020. Recent leaders are US (Frontier, Aurora) and Japan (Fugaku). US-China tech competition includes export controls limiting Chinese access to advanced chips.
Performance grows ~1000x per decade — historical Cray supercomputers from 1990s would rank below today’s high-end smartphones in raw FLOPS.
Frequently Asked Questions
World's fastest supercomputer?
Frontier at Oak Ridge National Lab, USA — 1.2 EFLOPS (1,200 PFLOPS).
What is an exascale computer?
1 EFLOPS = 10^18 FLOPS. Frontier (2022) was first; Aurora and El Capitan reached it in 2024.
How are these used?
Climate modeling, drug discovery, nuclear simulation, AI training. Many top supercomputers are at national labs.
Is China still competitive?
Despite export controls, China has homegrown systems but disclosure has dropped. Listed Chinese systems may be older.
Note: Performance per TOP500 list June 2024.
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