Virtual nuclear tests. America once again has the world’s fastest computer.

The world’s fastest computer is coming back from the United States. For the first time, a supercomputer can perform one trillion arithmetic tasks per second.

The world’s fastest computer is called the “Frontier”, located at the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee, USA. He took first place from the Japanese organization “Fukaku”. It’s been half a year since it was released TOP500 list of fastest supercomputers.

Assembled by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Frontier has a computing power of 1.1 exaflops, capable of performing 1.1 trillion (1,100,000,000,000,000,000) arithmetic operations per second. An addition or multiplication is understood as an arithmetic operation. Frontier was the first supercomputer to reach this “exoscale”.

Nearly nine million processor cores

It has a total of 8,730,112 processor cores on board from AMD. That means for the first time a system with AMD processors tops the TOP500 list. For years, it was primarily dominated by Intel, but like processors for personal computers, AMD technically outperformed its main competitors here as well.

Biz Taint, a Swiss supercomputer based at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center in Lugano, has been pushed to 23rd place. In 2017, Piz Daint was still in third place, but unlike the competition, it has not improved in recent years. The new supercomputer is set to be replaced by the “Alps” next year.

China has kept its supercomputers secret

Frontier is the world’s fastest documented supercomputer, but China may still have two faster systems. According to some reports, supercomputers with processors developed by Shenwei have already reached “exoscale” last year. However, for national security reasons, China has not fully released the capabilities of its supercomputers.

Because supercomputers are used for very important tasks. Systems are used to develop complex climate models or clinical research, as well as for realistic simulation of nuclear explosions.

It would replace actual nuclear weapons testing, subject to the strict limits imposed by international treaties. Frontier is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, which is also responsible for the United States nuclear weapons program.