Thorsten Kurth still remembers the night he discovered his team broke the exascale barrier.
On the couch at home at 9 p.m., he was pouring over the latest results from one of the first big jobs run on Summit, then the world's top supercomputer, based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The 12-person team had spent nights and weekends seeking a way that AI could track hundreds of hurricanes and atmospheric rivers buried in terabytes of historical climate data.
Only a few weeks earlier, their software failed to run on more than 64 of the system's nodes.
But this time - just two days before a paper on the work was due - it exercised 4,560 of Summit's 4,608 nodes to deliver the results. In the process, it achieved 1.13 exaflops of mixed-precision AI performance.
That was a good feeling, a lot of hard work paid off, recalled Kurth of the work he led while at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in 2018.
Entering the Exascale Era Today, we celebrate the work of everyone who's cracked a quintillion operations per second.
That's a billion billion or 10 to the 18th power. That's why we mark Exascale Day on Oct. 18.
About the same time Kurth's team was completing its work, researchers at Oak Ridge also entered the exascale era, hitting 1.8, then 2.36 exaflops on Summit, analyzing genomics to better understand the nature of opioid addiction.
COVID-19 Ignites Exascale Work Since then, many others have pushed the limits of science with GPUs.
In March 2020, the Folding@home project put out a call for donations of free cycles on home computers to run research examining the COVID-19 virus.
Ten days later their virtual, distributed system surpassed 1.5 exaflops, creating a crowd-sourced exascale supercomputer fueled in part by more than 356,000 NVIDIA GPUs.
AI Supercomputing Goes Global Today, academic and commercial labs worldwide are deploying a new generation of accelerated supercomputers capable of exascale-class AI.
The latest is Polaris, a system Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is building at Argonne National Lab capable of up to 1.4 AI exaflops. Researchers will use it to advance cancer treatments, explore clean energy and push the limits of physics, work that will be accelerated by 2,240 NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs.
Another powerful system stands on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Perlmutter uses 6,159 A100 GPUs to deliver nearly 4 exaflops of AI performance for more than 7,000 researchers working on projects that include drawing the largest 3D map of the visible universe to date.
Polaris and Perlmutter also use NVIDIA's software tools to help researchers prototype exascale applications.
Europe Erects Exascale AI Infrastructure Atos will build an even larger AI supercomputer for Italy's CINECA research center. Leonardo will pack 14,000 A100 GPUs on an NVIDIA Quantum 200Gb/s InfiniBand network to hit up to 10 exaflops of AI performance.
It's one of eight systems in a regional network that backers call an engine to power Europe's data economy.
One of Europe's largest AI-capable supercomputers is slated to come online in Switzerland in 2023. Alps will be built by HPE at the Swiss National Computing Center using NVIDIA GPUs and Grace, our first data center CPU. It's expected to scale to heights up to 20 AI exaflops.
An Industrial HPC Revolution Begins The move to high-performance AI extends beyond academic labs.
Advances in deep learning combined with the simulation technology of accelerated computing has put us at the beginnings of an industrial HPC revolution, said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang in a keynote earlier this year.
Selene uses a modular architecture based on the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD NVIDIA was an early player in this trend.
In the first days of the pandemic, we commissioned Selene, currently ranked as the world's fastest industrial supercomputer. It helps train autonomous vehicles, refine conversational AI techniques and more.
In June, Tesla Inc. unveiled its own industrial HPC system to train deep neural networks for its electric cars. It packs 5,760 NVIDIA GPUs to deliver up to 1.8 exaflops.
Beyond the Numbers Three years after winning a Gordon Bell award for breaking the exascale barrier, Kurth, now a senior software engineer at NVIDIA, sees the real fruit of his team's labors.
Improved versions of the AI model they pioneered are now available online for any climate scientist to use. They handle in an hour what used to take weeks. Governments can use them to plan budgets for disaster response.
In the end, Exascale Day is all about the people, because to succeed at this level, you need an excellent team with specialists who understand every aspect of what you are trying to do, Kurth said.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
21/04/2026
Cloud-based production isnt going anywhere, and BitFire is doubling down by prov...
21/04/2026
The topic of artificial intelligence has a stranglehold on the sports-video-prod...
21/04/2026
5G is still a hot topic in live event production, and this workflow continues to...
21/04/2026
At the 2026 NAB Show, Ed McGivern, GM and President of Appear US, discusses the ...
21/04/2026
Studio Network Solutions (SNS) has announced an on-premise AI suite designed for...
21/04/2026
Suite Studios has integrated its file-streaming technology into the newly announced Frame.io Drive, a desktop application from Adobe company Frame.io. The colla...
21/04/2026
Net Insight has integrated InSync Technology's FrameFormer into the Nimbra E...
21/04/2026
Fox Sports has selected Appear as a technology partner to support the next phase...
21/04/2026
Diversified has appointed Tyler Affolter as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) to lead the company's commercial organisation. The appointment follows the firm'...
21/04/2026
Layercake has formalised the integration of Bitmovin's video streaming infra...
21/04/2026
The International Judo Federation (IJF) has extended its distribution partnershi...
21/04/2026
Glookast has launched the Cinnafilm Tachyon plugin for its Media Producer and Me...
21/04/2026
Eutelsat has entered into an agreement with Cadena Tres, a division of Grupo Ima...
21/04/2026
Dolby Laboratories and TV Azteca have partnered to introduce Dolby Atmos immersive audio to free-to-air television broadcasts. The implementation utilises the A...
21/04/2026
FOX Entertainment partnered with Verizon to overcome significant production hurd...
21/04/2026
Osprey Video has announced its technology showcase for the NAB Show 2026, highli...
21/04/2026
Riedel Communications (Booth C4908) introduced a range of new solutions at NAB S...
21/04/2026
The NAB Show is in full swing, and the SVG and SVG Europe editorial teams are chasing down the hottest stories from all over the Las Vegas Convention Center. He...
21/04/2026
Blackmagic Design has announced the URSA Cine Immersive 100G, an immersive cinem...
21/04/2026
Clark Wire & Cable is continuing its evolution from cable supplier to full-scale solutions partner for broadcast and live production. At the 2026 NAB Show, we s...
21/04/2026
Rashad Frett attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Ricky at Eccles Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, UT. (Photo by George Pimentel/Shut...
21/04/2026
Five years ago, Spotify arrived in Pakistan, opening a new chapter in the country's music scene. Since then, local listeners have explored across genres, ge...
21/04/2026
Since its launch in 2020, RADAR has been our program for spotlighting emerging artists around the world. This year marks the sixth edition of RADAR Spain, our o...
21/04/2026
Offers compact wireless solution for pedalboards
Taiwanese audio brand Cloudvocal have announced the availability of a new pedalboard-friendly wireless syst...
21/04/2026
Latest hybrid sampling/synthesis instrument arrives
Arturia's Augmented series offerings rely on a mixture of sampling and synthesis, allowing users to ...
21/04/2026
Rohde & Schwarz to host Power Electronics Online Conference From Design to Vali...
21/04/2026
MAS and Lockheed Martin partner to establish an F-35 depot in Canada, enabling in-country sustainment and creating high-skilled aerospace jobs....
21/04/2026
Advertising strategies shift as competition grows for a large, active and qualit...
21/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/04/2026
Layercake Deepens Bitmovin Integration to Power End-to-End Media Orchestration w...
21/04/2026
Cobalt Digital Announces Launch of blueCORE at NAB Show 2026: Compact Powerhouse...
21/04/2026
On-Premise AI Suite from Studio Network Solutions Debuts at NAB Show 2026
Melanie Ciotti April 21, 2026
0 Comments
Unlimited processing, no cloud depe...
21/04/2026
London, 21 April 2026 IBC today announced the appointment of Tim Banham as its first Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), a newly created role that reflects the or...
21/04/2026
Motion Design Tools - April 2026
Roland Kahlenberg April 21, 2026
0 Comments
Within 2 days, Maxon and Canva announced pro-level motion design apps - A...
21/04/2026
Chaos and Zero Density to Showcase Real-Time Ray Tracing for Virtual Studios and...
21/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
Thorsten Kurth still remembers the night he discovered his team broke the exascale barrier.
