Since its full installation, the Helios supercomputer operating at ACC Cyfronet AGH has remained in the top one hundred fastest and top ten most energy-efficient computing machines in the world! In the new edition of the TOP500 and Green500 lists, it maintained its leading position in both categories in Poland.
Cyfronet supercomputers in 3 positions on the TOP500 list
The list of the five hundred fastest supercomputers includes three entries referring to machines operating in Cyfronet.The highest, in 96th place, is the Helios-GPU partition – the part of Helios equipped with 440 NVIDIA Grace Hopper GH200 superchips. A separately submitted Helios-CPU partition ranked 415th. The division into two separate entries is due to the desire to present the full capabilities of each computational partition using specially optimized benchmark versions created through collaboration between Cyfronet experts and HPE, NVIDIA, and AMD.
Helios has a total of 36 PFLOPS of theoretical computational power, over 108,000 compute cores, 460 TB of RAM, and 18 PB of storage systems that together provide nearly 2 TB/s of throughput. Helios’s computational power for AI workloads reaches 1.8 EXAFLOPS!
The supercomputer was built according to Cyfronet’s design by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise based on the HPE Cray EX platform, which was also used to build the world’s fastest supercomputers (El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora).
Additionally, the Athena supercomputer ranked 280th on TOP500. Athena delivers more than 7.7 PFLOPS of theoretical performance, securing 6th place in Poland in terms of computational power.
Athena’s configuration includes: servers with AMD EPYC processors (a total of 6,144 CPU compute cores) and 384 NVIDIA A100 GPGPU cards. Athena’s computational power for AI workloads reaches nearly 240 PFLOPS!
World-class energy efficiency
The true power of Helios becomes even more evident when looking at the Green500 list of the most energy-efficient supercomputers. In this case, it is not just about raw computational power, but about achieving it in an energy-efficient way. In the November Green500 list, the Helios-GPU partition maintained 8th place!
It is worth emphasizing that in the top ten of Green500, only two systems are comparable to Helios in terms of size, measured by the number of cores (the German Capella in 6th place and the American Portage in 10th). All other TOP10 computers are significantly smaller – which means it is easier for them to achieve a higher performance-to-power-consumption ratio.
Athena ranked 82nd on the Green500 list, and the Helios-CPU partition ranked 138th. Considering only Polish systems, those from Cyfronet took positions 1–3, clearly highlighting that the supercomputers at our center are designed with maximum energy efficiency in mind. Thanks to this, the environmental cost of computations performed on our infrastructure is significantly reduced, benefiting everyone, not only direct users.
Polish supercomputers on the TOP500 and Green500 lists
The TOP500 list includes 8 supercomputers from Poland (theoretical computational power in parentheses):
- #96 – Helios GPU (30.44 PFLOPS) – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #128 – Proxima (23.32 PFLOPS) – PCSS IChB PAN
- #141 – Lem (20.37 PFLOPS) – WCSS PWr
- #212 – The F.I.N (9.36 PFLOPS) – Beyond.pl
- #250 – Kraken-Fregata (10.02 PFLOPS) – CI TASK PG
- #280 – Athena (7.71 PFLOPS) – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #360 – Altair (5.88 PFLOPS) – PCSS IChB PAN
- #415 – Helios CPU (3.35 PFLOPS) – ACC Cyfronet AGH
The supercomputers included on the TOP500 list also participate in the Green500 ranking:
- #8 – Helios GPU – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #82 – Athena – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #138 – Helios CPU – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #182 – Altair – PCSS IChB PAN
- #271 – Proxima – PCSS IChB PAN
- #278 – Lem – WCSS PWr
- #314 – The F.I.N – Beyond.pl
- #332 – Kraken-Fregata – CI TASK PG
Poland in the European and global context
The world’s fastest supercomputer has once again been announced as El Capitan, installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the USA. El Capitan was built based on the HPE Cray EX platform, just like the Polish Helios, but includes over 11 million compute cores, securing its position as the global leader. The TOP10 list includes 4 machines from the USA, 5 from Europe, and 1 from Japan.
The fastest European supercomputer remains the EuroHPC JU flagship system installed in Germany, Jupiter Booster (4th place worldwide). Five places below is the LUMI supercomputer, which Polish researchers can access through the PLGrid infrastructure. These efforts are coordinated by ACC Cyfronet AGH.
Use the power of supercomputers in scientific research
Supercomputers make it possible to carry out in hours or days computations that would take many years using individual computers. Cyfronet users benefit from professional support—from training to individual consultations with experts.
Description of services within the PLGrid infrastructure can be found on the PLGrid website.
