AMD secures Top500 leadership with the world’s fastest and second-fastest supercomputers, reinforcing dominance in HPC and AI convergence
At the ISC High Performance 2025 conference, AMD extended its leadership in high-performance computing (HPC) and AI, with El Capitan and Frontier retaining the No. 1 and No. 2 positions on the Top500 list — a benchmark for the world’s most powerful supercomputers. This marks the seventh consecutive Top500 list led by an AMD-powered system.
El Capitan: World’s Fastest Supercomputer
Deployed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and built by HPE, El Capitan achieved a staggering 1.742 exaflops on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark. It utilizes AMD Instinct™ MI300A APUs, combining CPU and GPU cores into a unified chip, optimized for simultaneous simulation, analytics, and AI inference workloads.
“From El Capitan to Frontier, AMD continues to deliver record-breaking performance and energy leadership, accelerating scientific discovery and AI innovation.”
— Forrest Norrod, EVP & GM, Data Center Solutions Group, AMD
“El Capitan is a transformative national resource… This platform is a true ‘two-fer’ — an HPC and AI powerhouse,” said Rob Neely, Associate Director at LLNL.
Frontier: Holding Strong at No. 2
Located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Frontier remains the second-fastest supercomputer globally, clocking 1.353 exaflops on HPL. Powered by AMD EPYC™ CPUs and AMD Instinct™ MI250X GPUs, Frontier supports advanced research in climate science, energy, and artificial intelligence.
El Capitan Leads in Mixed-Precision AI
On the HPL-MxP benchmark, which measures AI performance using mixed-precision workloads, El Capitan debuted at No. 1 with 16.7 exaflops. AMD also secured the third and fourth spots with Frontier and LUMI, respectively—showcasing its leadership in AI-HPC convergence.
In the HPCG benchmark, El Capitan recorded the world’s highest score at 17.4 petaflops, underlining its ability to handle real-world scientific applications with unmatched memory bandwidth.
Green500: Performance Meets Energy Efficiency
AMD powers 12 of the top 20 systems on the Green500 list, including El Capitan and Frontier, which ranked #26 and #32 respectively in energy efficiency. These results affirm AMD’s commitment to performance-per-watt leadership as HPC and AI workloads grow more power-hungry.
AMD’s Expanding Global HPC Footprint
With 172 systems — over a third of the latest Top500 list — now powered by AMD, the company is expanding its global reach. New entrants include:
- Hunter, at HLRS University of Stuttgart (MI300A)
- Viper, University of Hull (MI300A)
- Pitagora, CINECA, Italy (5th Gen EPYC)
Looking Ahead
AMD’s scalable portfolio — from exascale supercomputers to edge AI deployments — is driving a new era of scientific and industrial innovation. By unifying HPC and AI through advanced compute architectures, AMD is enabling breakthroughs in everything from nuclear safety and climate modeling to LLM training and generative AI.
