Cyfronet's supercomputers are among the fastest and most energy-efficient in the world
On June 10, 2025, during the ISC High Performance conference in Hamburg, new TOP500 and Green500 lists were announced – ranking the world's fastest and most energy-efficient supercomputers.
Supercomputer Helios – operating at ACC Cyfronet AGH – has ranked among the top 100 fastest and top 10 most energy-efficient computing machines in the world! This confirms its position as a leader in both categories in Poland.
Cyfronet's supercomputers hold three positions on the TOP500 List
The list of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers includes three entries related to machines operating at Cyfronet. The highest-ranked, at position 85, is the Helios-GPU partition – a part of Helios equipped with 440 NVIDIA Grace Hopper GH200 superchips. The separately listed Helios-CPU partition holds position 386. The division into two separate entries results from the intension to showcase the full capabilities of each computing partition using specially optimized benchmark versions, developed through collaboration between Cyfronet experts and HPE, NVIDIA, and AMD.
Helios has a total theoretical computing power of 36 PFLOPS, over 108,000 computing cores, 460 TB of operational memory, and 18 PB of disk storage capacity, collectively offering nearly 2 TB/s performance. Helios' computing power for AI calculations is 1.8 EXAFLOPS!
The supercomputer was designed by Cyfronet and built by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise based on the HPE Cray EX platform, which was also used to construct the world's fastest supercomputers (El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora).
Additionally, the Athena supercomputer ranked 246th on the TOP500 list. Athena boasts a theoretical computing power of over 7.7 PFLOPS, securing its position as the fifth most powerful computing system in Poland.
Athena's configuration includes servers with AMD EPYC processors (6,144 CPU computing cores in total) and 384 NVIDIA A100 GPGPU cards. Athena's computing power for AI calculations reaches nearly 240 PFLOPS!
World-class energy efficiency
The true power of Helios becomes even more evident when examining the Green500 list of the world's most energy-efficient supercomputers. This ranking focuses not just on computing power but on achieving it in an energy-efficient manner. On the June Green500 list, the Helios-GPU partition ranked 8th!
It is worth noting that among the top ten Green500 systems, only one is comparable in size to Helios in terms of the number of cores (Germany's Capella at 6th place). All other TOP10 computers are significantly smaller – which means achieving a higher computational power-to-energy consumption ratio is easier for them.
Athena ranked 74th on the Green500 list, and Helios-CPU 131st. Looking at Polish systems alone, those from Cyfronet took the top three positions, clearly highlighting that supercomputers in our center are designed with maximum energy efficiency in mind. This significantly reduces the environmental cost of computations performed on our infrastructure, benefiting not just direct users but everyone.
Polish supercomputers on the TOP500 and Green500 lists
The TOP500 list includes 7 supercomputers from Poland (theoretical computing power in parentheses):
# 85 - Helios GPU (30.44 PFLOPS) - ACC Cyfronet AGH
# 111 - Proxima (23.32 PFLOPS) - PCSS IChB PAN
# 121 - Lem (20.37 PFLOPS) - WCSS PWr
# 217 - Kraken-Fregata (10.02 PFLOPS) - CI TASK PG
# 246 - Athena (7.71 PFLOPS) - ACC Cyfronet AGH
# 329 - Altair (5.88 PFLOPS) - PCSS IChB PAN
# 386 - Helios CPU (3.35 PFLOPS) - ACC Cyfronet AGH
Supercomputers included in the TOP500 list also participate in the Green500 ranking:
# 8 - Helios GPU - ACC Cyfronet AGH
# 74 - Athena - ACC Cyfronet AGH
# 131 - Helios CPU - ACC Cyfronet AGH
# 177 - Altair - PCSS IChB PAN
# 272 - Proxima - PCSS IChB PAN
# 276 - Lem - WCSS PWr
# 321 - Kraken-Fregata - CI TASK PG
Poland in the context of Europe and the world
The world's fastest supercomputer has been announced as El Capitan, installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Oak, USA. El Capitan was built on the HPE Cray EX platform, just like Poland's Helios, but features over 11 million computing 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 is the Jupiter Booster, installed in Germany (4th place worldwide). Five spots lower is the LUMI supercomputer, which Polish scientists can access via the PLGrid infrastructure. These activities are coordinated by ACC Cyfronet AGH. More information can be found at: LUMI supercomputer.
Harness the power of supercomputers for scientific research
Supercomputers enable calculations that would take years on individual computers to be completed in just a few hours or days. Cyfronet users benefit from professional support – from training sessions to individual consultations with experts. Information about ACC Cyfronet AGH resources and ongoing initiatives is available on Cyfronet's website, while service descriptions within the PLGrid infrastructure can be found at PLGrid's website.