Today, House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Ranking Member Frank Lucas released a statement congratulating the Oak Ridge National Lab’s Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) on achieving exascale computing on the Frontier system. Frontier can perform a quintillion (one billion, billion) calculations per second and was named the fastest supercomputer in the world today.

“This is an incredible accomplishment by the team at Oak Ridge and a testament to the value of our National Labs,” Lucas said. “Exascale is the next generation of computing power and it’s critical that the United States leads the way in this technology. We’ve achieved this goal through strategic support of basic research at the Department of Energy, particularly through the Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program. Through the Science Committee’s bipartisan Department of Energy Research and Innovation Act, which I was proud to cosponsor, we prioritized the development of exascale systems in 2018, and today we’re seeing the fruits of that effort. It highlights why it’s so important that we continue to support the basic research that keeps America competitive, supports our economy, and strengthens our national defense. That’s a high priority for me as we conference competitiveness legislation, and it’s why the bipartisan DOE Science for the Future Act contains targeted support for exascale and beyond-exascale computing.  I’d like to congratulate everyone involved from the Office of Science, the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, and industry partners Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Advanced Micro Devices. And I’d also like to commend the other National Lab and U.S. systems named to the list of top ten fastest supercomputers.”

In addition to Frontier, four other U.S. supercomputers were named among the world’s ten fastest systems, including:

Number 4: Summit at Oak Ridge National Lab

Number 5: Sierra at Lawrence Livermore National Lab

Number 7: Perlmutter at Lawrence Berkely National Lab

Number 8: Selene by Nvidia