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All hail the new king.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has announced the launch of El Capitan, the world’s fastest supercomputer, a task that is indeed a daring venture.

While most supercomputers are tasked with rendering pixels for entertainment, El Capitan is designed to help researchers simulate the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile.

The hardware specifications are staggering: 44,544 AMD Instinct MI300A APUs, each with 128 GB of HBM3 memory, located across 11,136 nodes in liquid-cooled racks. The performance peaks at approximately 2.7 quintillion calculations per second (2.746 exaFLOPS), eclipsing its predecessor, the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Frontier, which was rated at 1.102 quintillion calculations per second.

Nuclear testing has been effectively banned since the ’90s, so simulations like those performed by El Capitan are crucial for understanding the aging and functionality of these weapons.

The supercomputer will also assist in material discovery and high-energy density physics research. Moreover, the laboratory hints at an aesthetically pleasing element, featuring an image of the famous El Capitan mountain from Yosemite National Park, perhaps to soften the intimidating image of such powerful technology simulating nuclear armament.

For those curious, while El Capitan rules the hardware realm, the enticing question remains: can it handle gaming tasks like a regular PC? As it stands, it seems designed for much more significant responsibilities.