American multinational semiconductor company AMD was tapped to power what is now recognized as the first exascale supercomputer in the world.

According to the latest Top500 and Green500, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Frontier system is the first to break the exascale barrier with a score of 1.1 exaflops. Frontier’s performance is more than double the No. 2 system and greater than the sum of the next seven systems on the latest Top500 list.

“The Frontier supercomputer, powered by AMD and HPE, represents a massive step forward for both science and for the HPC industry,” said Bronson Messer, director of science, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. “Our collaboration with AMD has been critical for us to ensure that we deploy the world’s leading platform for computational science. The Frontier supercomputer taps into the combined performance of enhanced AMD CPUs and AMD Instinct accelerators, along with an enhanced AMD ROCm 5 open software platform, to deliver the performance researchers need to carry out scientific research for the good of all mankind.”

Berkeley’s supercomputer runs on AMD EPYC processors
AMD EPYC processors to power Argonne National Laboratory’s supercomputer

The Frontier test and development system (TDS) secured the top spot on the Green500 list, delivering 62.68 gigaflops/watt power-efficiency from a single cabinet of optimized 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct MI250x accelerators. Frontier’s mixed-precision computing performance clocked in at 6.86 exaflops, as measured by the High-Performance Linpack-Accelerator Introspection, or HPL-AI, test. The next steps for Frontier include continued testing and validation of the system, which remains on track for final acceptance and early science access later in 2022, and open for full science at the beginning of 2023.

AMD EPYC, AMD Instinct

“Innovation and delivering more performance and efficiency for supercomputers is critical to addressing the world’s most complex challenges,” said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Data Center Solutions Group, AMD. “AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators continue to push the envelope in high-performance computing, providing the performance needed to advance scientific discoveries.”

In other AMD EPYC and AMD Instinct MI200 systems, CSC’s LUMI supercomputer is third on the Top500 list with 152 petaflops of performance and third on the Green500 list with 51.63 gigaflops/watt power-efficiency, and the Adastra system at GENCI-CINES is tenth on the Top500 list and fourth on the Green500 list. These systems continue to highlight the performance and efficiency capabilities of the AMD Instinct accelerators at a node, cabinet and system level.

Top500, Green500

The Top500 and Green500 lists showcase the rapidly growing preference for AMD solutions across the HPC industry. On the Top500 list, AMD powers 94 total systems, an increase of 95% year-over-year, and AMD Instinct MI200 accelerators made their first entry to the Top500 list with seven systems. The performance number delivered by this single generation of AMD Instinct based systems on the Top500 list almost equals the combined Flops of the rest of the 161 accelerated system on Top500

On the Green500 list, AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators now power the four most efficient supercomputers in the world. AMD products are in eight of the top ten, and 17 of the top 20 most efficient.