Livermore, California, 9 January 2025 — More than 300 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) employees, government officials, and industry leaders gathered on 9 January to celebrate the dedication of El Capitan, the world's fastest supercomputer. The ceremony marked the acceptance and deployment of the first exascale computing system built for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a historic milestone in national security and scientific computing.
An exascale computer can perform more than a quintillion (10^18) floating-point operations per second — more than one million times faster than the supercomputers used at the beginning of science-based stockpile stewardship three decades ago. El Capitan achieves 1.742 exaflops on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, with a peak performance rated at 2.79 exaflops.
A Multi-Year, $600 Million Achievement
El Capitan is the new flagship computing system for the NNSA Labs: LLNL, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories. Built in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), AMD, and Red Hat, the system features AMD's Instinct MI300A Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) and HPE's Slingshot interconnect, representing a significant leap forward in computational capability for national security applications.
The system first appeared on the TOP500 list in November 2024, when it was verified as the world's fastest supercomputer. The January 2025 event marked the formal ceremonial dedication, celebrating the completion of a multi-year, $600 million project that brought together government, industry, and scientific leaders.
The Dedication Ceremony
LLNL Director Kim Budil opened the ceremony by honoring former President Jimmy Carter, who had passed away on 29 December 2024. Budil acknowledged Carter's contributions to global security, his service as a nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy, and his signing of the 1977 legislation that created the Department of Energy. "In some sense, we celebrate his legacy with El Capitan," Budil said, also noting Carter's connection to the Lab through Secretary of Defense Harold Brown — one of Budil's predecessors as Lab director.
"Today, more than 60 years later, we are dedicating the most powerful supercomputer ever built for this purpose," Budil told attendees.
The ceremony featured speeches from prominent figures including Lab leadership, NNSA officials, and CEOs from HPE and AMD. LLNL's Weapon Simulation and Computing Associate Director Rob Neely, who emceed the event, described the occasion as "a testament to partnership," emphasizing the collaboration between NNSA, LLNL, and industry leaders.
Industry Leaders on Collaboration
HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri praised El Capitan as "the pinnacle of engineering collaboration," marking a "significant leap for scientific discovery and innovation."
AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su described the project as "a culmination of over a decade of collaboration" and a testament to government and industry working together for the greater good. "I am so proud of the work we've done together," Su said. "I think this really is the best of bringing private and public partnerships together to really bring groundbreaking innovations required to keep the United States as the leader in this area."
National Security Mission
El Capitan's primary mission is to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile without the need for underground nuclear testing. The system enables complex simulations and AI capabilities critical to the NNSA's Stockpile Stewardship Program.
NNSA's Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs Marvin Adams called El Capitan a "remarkable machine" that will enable simulations critical to national security. "It's important that our deterrent is more than the nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles," Adams said. "It is also the credibility of our scientists and our engineers, and the credibility that goes along with having this kind of facility. This says we know what we're doing in this very important technology."
Brad Wallin, LLNL's Deputy Director of Strategic Deterrence, noted that while El Capitan was procured primarily for modeling and simulation, its architecture also makes it a powerhouse for AI training and inference. "While we are still exploring the full role AI will play in our mission, we are confident it will accelerate our already outstanding R&D capabilities, and with El Capitan, we are ready for whatever the future holds," Wallin said.
Tuolumne: A Companion for Open Science
The dedication also highlighted El Capitan's companion system, Tuolumne, which supports a wide range of unclassified research initiatives through LLNL's Multiprogrammatic and Institutional Computing (M&IC) program.
LLNL Deputy Director for Science and Technology Pat Falcone described Tuolumne's significance: "What makes Tuolumne really special is that it's available to everyone at the Lab with a need for high-performance computing — whether our scientists are tackling fundamental numerical and mathematical research or developing simulations of quantum systems, advanced manufacturing processes, biological pathways, space science or earthquake modeling."
Three Decades of Advanced Simulation and Computing
As part of the ceremony, NNSA's Deputy Assistant Deputy Administrator for the Office of Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC), Thuc Hoang, marked the 30th anniversary of the ASC program, which began in October 1995 as the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI).
Hoang reflected on the progress from terascale systems to high-resolution, full-system simulation ensembles on the exascale El Capitan. "We do more than just computing," Hoang said. "It's about delivering powerful, validated modeling and simulation capabilities to solve the nation's most challenging scientific problems."
Looking Forward
Bruce Hendrickson, LLNL's principal associate director for Computing, thanked the team that brought El Capitan to fruition, acknowledging the contributions of unsung heroes such as legal advisors, procurement specialists, and construction supervisors. "It really does take a village to deliver on a project of this scope," Hendrickson said. "I'm incredibly excited about where we go next as we harness the power of El Cap and Tuolumne for our missions. It's the end of one long journey, but in many ways, it's just an inflection point."
The event, simulcast live across the Laboratory and externally, included tours of El Capitan and Tuolumne for employees who worked on the project, industry partners, and media. The afternoon VIP tour featured the signing of an El Capitan compute rack by CEOs Neri and Su, followed by high-level meetings between Lab, NNSA, and company leaders.
Sources
- LLNL News, "LLNL dedicates El Capitan, ushering in new era in supercomputing for national security," 16 January 2025 —
- AMD Blog, "El Capitan Takes Exascale Computing to New Heights," 2025 —
- TOP500 List, November 2024 —
- Wikipedia, "El Capitan (supercomputer)" —
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