Operating at ACC Cyfronet AGH, the Helios supercomputer has remained in the top ten most energy-efficient computing machines in the world since its full installation! It is also ranked among the fastest supercomputers. 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 116th 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 352nd. 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. It is worth noting that thanks to last year's expansion, the Helios CPU partition advanced from 413th place.
Helios has a total of 37 PFLOPS of theoretical computational power, over 131,000 compute cores, 393 TB of RAM, and 17.5 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 EX4000 platform, which was also used to build some of the world’s fastest supercomputers (El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora).
Additionally, the Athena supercomputer ranked 306th 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 June 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 94th on the Green500 list, and the Helios-CPU partition ranked 153rd. 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):
- #116 – Helios GPU (30.44 PFLOPS) – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #147 – Proxima (23.32 PFLOPS) – PCSS IChB PAN
- #162 – Lem (20.37 PFLOPS) – WCSS PWr
- #235 – The F.I.N (9.36 PFLOPS) – Beyond.pl
- #273 – Kraken-Fregata (10.02 PFLOPS) – CI TASK PG
- #306 – Athena (7.71 PFLOPS) – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #352 – Helios CPU (4.42 PFLOPS) – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #385 – Altair (5.88 PFLOPS) – PCSS IChB PAN
The supercomputers included on the TOP500 list also participate in the Green500 ranking:
- #8 – Helios GPU – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #94 – Athena – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #153 – Helios CPU – ACC Cyfronet AGH
- #193 – Altair – PCSS IChB PAN
- #283 – Proxima – PCSS IChB PAN
- #291 – Lem – WCSS PWr
- #327 – The F.I.N – Beyond.pl
- #345 – Kraken-Fregata – CI TASK PG
Poland in the European and global context
The new world leader is the LineShine supercomputer operating at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen (NSCS) in China. The American El Capitan, installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the USA, has dropped to second place. To show the scale of these computers, it is worth noting that the first one includes over 13.5 million compute cores, and the second one over 11 million.
The TOP10 list includes: 4 machines from the USA, 4 from Europe, 1 from Japan, and 1 from China.
The fastest European supercomputer remains the EuroHPC JU flagship system installed in Germany, Jupiter Booster (5th place worldwide). Six 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.
