SC24, held recently in Atlanta, was a landmark event, setting new records and demonstrating Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) unparalleled contributions to high-performance computing (HPC) innovation and impact.
SC, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, is the biggest supercomputing event of the year. SC24 reached an all-time high for the conference series with more than 18,000 attendees and a conference show floor record with 500 exhibitors, serving as a global stage for the latest in HPC technology. LLNL once again stood at the forefront as a world leader in HPC, showcasing groundbreaking hardware, leading discussions on artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing-fueled scientific advancements and winning several awards, reflecting the Lab's instrumental role in shaping the future of computing.
El Capitan: the crown jewel of supercomputing
The centerpiece of LLNL's SC24 presence was El Capitan, verified by the Top500 at the conference as the world's fastest supercomputer. At a sustained 1.742 exaFLOPs (1.742 quintillion calculations per second) and over 2.7 exaFLOPs of peak performance, El Capitan topped the November 2024 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers.
Developed in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and AMD, El Capitan is a leap forward in speed, precision and efficiency for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Tri-Labs (LLNL, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories) and the NNSA's stockpile stewardship mission.
"El Capitan is more than just a machine - as NNSA's first exascale computer, it represents a pivotal next step in our commitment to ensuring the safety, security and reliability of our nation's nuclear stockpile without the need to resume underground nuclear testing," NNSA Acting Deputy Administrator Corey Hinderstein said at a pre-conference press briefing. "This is a momentous day, not only for NNSA, but also for the future of national security, with El Capitan's computational power and advanced architecture, we are making it clear to the world and to our adversaries that the United States remains at the leading edge of scientific and technical capabilities needed for our defense."
LLNL's Weapon Simulation and Computing Associate Director Rob Neely said LLNL and NNSA Tri-Lab scientists "expect El Capitan to make those hero runs of yesterday more commonplace, allowing us to analyze components of the stockpile in great detail and with more precision than ever before."
"This machine's power will enable us to incorporate various real-world factors, such as materials, manufacturing imperfections, environmental conditions and abnormal and hostile environments," Neely said. "This means more accurate predictive capabilities and, by extension, better informed decision making for the NNSA stockpile stewardship program."
El Capitan represents a more than 20-fold increase in peak performance over Sierra, LLNL's previous most powerful supercomputer. LLNL's Chief Technical Officer for Livermore Computing Bronis de Supinski credited the new machine's speed to numerous innovations, including its 40,000-plus AMD Instinct MI300A Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) - a cutting-edge processor combining CPU cores with graphics processing units (GPUs) in a single shared package - allowing for a scale "unprecedented for a GPU-enabled system at an NNSA laboratory."
LLNL's Weapon Simulation and Computing Associate Program Director Teresa Bailey called El Capitan "a historic achievement," adding that the machine will combine simulations with experimental results and AI to achieve breakthroughs in scientific areas such as inertial confinement fusion (ICF), with broad impacts across NNSA's mission space.
"El Capitan is the right machine for the right time," Bailey said. "It helps us advance our simulation capabilities, as well as drive AI inference and training based on some of those simulation data sets. We think this is very important to help NNSA and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory stay on the forefront of high-performance computing."
Representatives from HPE, AMD, the NNSA and LLNL's Deputy Director for HPC Terri Quinn and LLNL computational physicist Luc Peterson also participated in the press conference.
LLNL showcases exascale dominance and AI-based innovation
Top500 representatives made El Capitan's No. 1 ranking official at the SC24 press briefing on Nov. 18, where they unveiled the November 2024 lists of the worlds' most powerful (Top500) and energy-efficient (Green500) supercomputers. The list underscored the dominance of the Department of Energy in computing, as El Capitan, ORNL's Frontier and ANL's Aurora claimed the top three slots. LLNL currently boasts a total of 14 machines on the Top500, by far the most of any supercomputing site in the world.
Later that evening, during the SC24 opening night gala, a fireside chat with NNSA Deputy Assistant Deputy Administrator for Advanced Simulation and Computing Thuc Hoang, LLNL's Neely, HPE's Chief Product Officer and Senior Vice President for HPC, AI & Labs Trish Damkroger (formerly of LLNL), and AMD Corporate Fellow Steve Scott delved deeper into the impacts and capabilities of El Capitan. Held at the DOE booth, speakers discussed El Capitan's ability to perform high-fidelity 3D simulations in support of national security and highlighted the system's innovative technologies and AI capabilities. The event concluded with a discussion on the future of HPC and AI integration.
The combination of AI and exascale computing again took center stage at the DOE booth on Nov. 19, as LLNL's Peterson gave a talk focused on leveraging AI for ICF on El Capitan. With the multi-disciplinary ICECap (Inertial Confinement Energy on El Capitan) project, Peterson said his team aims to pave the way for exascale digital design and engineering and enhance fusion ignition reliability by using AI to optimize ICF target designs.
"With ICECap we're putting this all together," Peterson said. "These advanced simulations are really unprecedented - these are the highest-resolution ICF simulations that have ever been done, and the team has done a lot into making them robust."
