Scientists have unveiled the world's fastest computer in California that will be used to safeguard America's nuclear weapons stockpile.
The $600 million exascale supercomputer, called 'El Capitan', is only the third of its kind in the world.
It is capable of performing 2.79 quintillion calculations per second.
That's equivalent to the processing power of about a million high-end smartphones working simultaneously, researchers said.
El Capitan launched at Livermore National Laboratory (LNNL) in November 2024 and was officially announced to the public on January 9.
It will focus primarily on national security, including nuclear data and weapons testing, high energy density physics, materials discovery and other sensitive or classified tasks.
“El Capitan's capabilities will help researchers ensure the safety, security and reliability of the country's nuclear stockpile in the absence of underground testing, which has been banned since 1992,” scientists shared in a statement.
The supercomputer will do this by performing advanced calculations that simulate nuclear detonations from the US stockpile.
This technological behemoth has the same square footage as a five- to six-bedroom mansion (6,000 square feet) and weighs a whopping four blue whales (1.3 million pounds).
Scientists unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer, El Capitan, in California, which will be used to safeguard the US nuclear weapons stockpile
“Because we stopped doing underground nuclear testing, we had to replace that with something,” Pythagoras Watson, the advanced technology system team leader, told CBS News Bay Area.
Simulating detonations on very large computers like El Capitan will help experts understand how nuclear weapons are aging, whether American ones are still effective and what measures need to be taken to ensure they remain effective, Watson said.
Most of the weapons in the current U.S. stockpile were produced in the 1970s and 1980s, meaning they are 55 to 65 years old, according to the Department of Energy.
Testing them with supercomputer simulations is a safe and effective way to ensure that the country's nuclear weapons will work if the need ever arises to use them.
Watson said LLNL has consistently partnered with Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory on the Department of Energy's Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan.
But El Capitan will also be used for other areas of interest, running simulations to support research into climate change, artificial intelligence, genetics and more.
This supercomputer is also equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. While it is not designed exclusively to do this type of work, officials expect it will make full use of these emerging technologies.
“While we are still exploring the full role that AI will play, there is no doubt that it will improve our ability to do the research and development we need,” Bradley Wallin, deputy director of Livermore Lab, told Axios.
El Capitan can perform 2.79 quintillion calculations per second. That's equivalent to the processing power of about a million high-end smartphones working simultaneously
This technological behemoth has the same square footage as a five- to six-bedroom mansion (6,000 square feet) and weighs a whopping four blue whales (1.3 million pounds).
El Capitan will perform advanced calculations that simulate nuclear detonations from the US stockpile to assess how the effectiveness of these warheads has changed over time
These techniques “will benefit both unclassified and classified missions,” LNNL's statement reads.
Construction of the machine began in May 2023 and El Capitan officially became the fastest computer in the world when it came online last year with a score of 1,742 exaFLOPS in the High-Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark.
This test is used to evaluate the processing speed of a supercomputer, and with a score of 1.742, El Capitan is only the third computer to ever achieve exascale computing speeds.
Exascale supercomputers are currently considered the fastest and most powerful in the world. El Capitan is about 18 times faster than LNNL's previous supercomputing system, Sierra.
Watson is optimistic about the many ways El Capitan will benefit the US and the rest of the world.
“I think it's great that this is actually something that ultimately really helps the country and the world in doing this research,” he said.
