Frontier ranked No. 1 on the June 2024 TOP500 list, ahead of Intel-powered Aurora: its High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark result was 1.206 exaflops, compared with Aurora’s 1.012 exaflops. That was a lead on a specific benchmark and ranking date—not proof that Frontier was faster at every scientific or AI workload, or that it remained No. 1 afterward.
What the June 2024 ranking showed
TOP500 ranks supercomputers using the High Performance Linpack benchmark, or HPL. On the June 2024 list, Frontier, installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), placed first; Aurora, installed at Argonne National Laboratory, placed second. The U.S. Department of Energy described the two systems as the world’s first and second official exascale supercomputers.
| System | June 2024 TOP500 position | HPL result | Installation site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier | No. 1 | 1.206 exaflops | Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
| Aurora | No. 2 | 1.012 exaflops | Argonne National Laboratory |
These are HPL results reported by TOP500 in 2024. One exaflop represents one quintillion floating-point operations per second in the benchmark’s measurement. The comparison means Frontier’s reported HPL performance was higher in that list; it does not establish a universal ranking across every kind of computing task.
How the systems differ
Frontier: AMD CPUs and accelerators
Frontier uses HPE Cray EX235a architecture, 3rd-generation AMD EPYC CPUs, AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators, and a Slingshot-11 interconnect. TOP500 reported 8,699,904 combined CPU and GPU cores for its 2024 configuration.
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Aurora: Intel CPUs and accelerators
Aurora uses HPE Cray EX architecture with Intel Exascale Compute Blades, Intel Xeon CPU Max processors, Intel Data Center GPU Max accelerators, and a Slingshot-11 interconnect. TOP500 described the configuration submitted for the June 2024 list as a half-scale system.
Aurora’s half-scale submission still exceeded the exascale threshold on HPL: its reported 1.012 exaflops is above one exaflop. The description “half-scale” refers to the submitted system configuration, not to a claim that Aurora failed to reach exascale performance.
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What “AMD staves off Intel” means—and what it does not
The headline refers to Frontier retaining the top position over Aurora in the June 2024 TOP500 HPL ranking. It is shorthand for that measured result, not a finding that AMD hardware outperformed Intel hardware in every workload or that Aurora was inferior for all uses. A single benchmark score cannot settle which machine is better for a particular scientific simulation, AI workload, or other application.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Did Frontier stay the fastest supercomputer?
No. The ranking changed later in 2024. TOP500’s November 2024 list placed El Capitan first, Frontier second, and Aurora third. Frontier was therefore No. 1 on the June list, but it should not be described as the continuing No. 1 without specifying the date.
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Sources
- TOP500, June 2024 list — rankings and HPL results.
- TOP500, 2024 report on Frontier and Aurora — system configurations and Aurora’s half-scale submission context.
- U.S. Department of Energy, 2024 — its description of the two systems’ positions.
- TOP500, November 2024 list — subsequent positions of El Capitan, Frontier, and Aurora.
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