AMD, Intel, and Nvidia all love to talk about their supercomputer wins. Winning a supercomputer contract doesn’t just represent a few thousand CPU or GPU sales — it gives the company in question unique bragging rights depending on the target workload, system speed, energy efficiency, and other demonstrated technology milestones. Winning a world government as a supercomputing customer is typically read (or at least marketed) as a demonstration of trust in a company’s long-term product roadmap.

Mar 05, 2020  AMD, HPE and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have announced a new exascale supercomputer dubbed El Capitan. Due to begin operations in early 2023, El Capitan.

Today, AMD and HP are talking up their new partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories to build El Capitan — an exascale-class supercomputer scheduled to be delivered by early 2023. Intel is scheduled to deliver a one exaflop system by 2021, so we’re seeing a significant leapfrog in total compute power in a relatively short period of time. The system will be shared by three separate facilities: LLNL, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The machine will be used to simulate nuclear reactions to ensure safe management of the US nuclear stockpile as it ages. El Capitan will also “provide opportunities for researchers to explore new applications using emerging data-intensive workloads such as modeling, simulation, analytics, and AI to support future NNSA missions.”

The next-generation system will be based on AMD’s upcoming fourth-generation Zen architecture, codenamed Genoa, “next-generation” Radeon Instinct GPUs based on a new compute-optimized architecture, and a third-generation iteration of AMD’s Infinity Fabric. The Zen 3 architecture is expected in 2020, but AMD hasn’t given a date for Zen 4, beyond acknowledging that the architecture is in-design. If the company keeps to a yearly cadence we’d expect to see Zen 4 by 2021; if there’s a Zen 3+ step, we’d expect the chip to drop in 2022.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and AMD will deliver what they expect to be the world's fastest supercomputer in 2023, a $600 million machine at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory called El Capitan. To enable greater than 2 exaflops of double precision processing power, the U.S. Department of Energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and HPE have teamed up with AMD to design El Capitan, expected to be the world’s fastest supercomputer with delivery anticipated in early 2023. El Capitan will leverage next generation products that incorporate improvements from the custom processor design in Frontier.

According to HP, the 2 exaflop target represents a 1.3x increase in achievable performance compared with what was forecast seven months ago. AMD isn’t talking about the exact number of CPUs and GPUs or any specs for the processors but did acknowledge that much of the horsepower would be provided by GPUs, not CPUs. That’s not at all unexpected; the adoption of GPU accelerators is largely behind the sudden surge in supercomputing horsepower over the last decade.

HP Cray, as one might expect, will be closely involved in this endeavor. HP will use a future version of its Shasta Compute Blade technology for El Capitan, along with Cray’s new Slingshot interconnect. Two additional specific projects the supercomputer will be used for, in addition to nuclear stockpile modeling, is a partnership with GlaxoSmithKline to try and accelerate cancer drug development timelines from six years to one, and research conducted in partnership with the National Cancer Institute to understand the mutation of RAS proteins linked to 30 percent of human cancers.

Overall, it’s a strong win for AMD and a sign that Epyc is being evaluated more broadly across the industry. Whether this will lead to more wins for AMD in AI and perhaps a new focus on that market segment is less clear. This announcement is a win for Radeon Instinct as well, but it would be nice to see AMD talking more about that side of the business.

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Check compatibility

You can upgrade to OS X El Capitan from OS X Snow Leopard or later on any of the following Mac models. Your Mac also needs at least 2GB of memory and 8.8GB of available storage space.

MacBook introduced in 2009 or later, plus MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)
MacBook Air introduced in late 2008 or later
MacBook Pro introduced in mid 2007 or later
Mac mini introduced in early 2009 or later
iMac introduced in mid 2007 or later
Mac Pro introduced in early 2008 or later
Xserve models introduced in early 2009

To find your Mac model, memory, storage space, and macOS version, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu . If your Mac isn't compatible with OS X El Capitan, the installer will let you know.

Make a backup

Before installing any upgrade, it’s a good idea to back up your Mac. Time Machine makes it simple, and other backup methods are also available. Learn how to back up your Mac.

Get connected

It takes time to download and install OS X, so make sure that you have a reliable Internet connection. If you're using a Mac notebook computer, plug it into AC power.

Download OS X El Capitan

For the strongest security and latest features, find out whether you can upgrade to macOS Catalina, the latest version of macOS.

If you still need OS X El Capitan, use this link: Download OS X El Capitan. A file named InstallMacOSX.dmg will download to your Mac.

Install the macOS installer

Double-click the downloaded file to open a window showing its contents. Then double-click the file within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg.

Follow the onscreen instructions, which will guide you through the steps necessary to install.

Begin installation

After installation of the installer is complete, open the Applications folder on your Mac, then double-click the file named Install OS X El Capitan.

Click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions. You might find it easiest to begin installation in the evening so that it can complete overnight, if needed.

Allow installation to complete

Please allow installation to complete without putting your Mac to sleep or closing its lid. Your Mac might restart, show a progress bar, or show a blank screen several times as it installs both OS X and related updates to your Mac firmware.

Learn more

El Capitan For Mac Download

• OS X El Capitan won't install on top of a later version of macOS, but you can erase your disk first or install on another disk.
• You can use macOS Recovery to reinstall macOS.