Researchers from around the world use the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) to solve problems so challenging they require the world’s most powerful computers. OLCF’s high-performance computing systems—“supercomputers”— coupled with the expertise of OLCF technical staff solve problems in diverse fields, including improvements to the safety and performance of nuclear power plants, design of new materials that can revolutionize industries, and models of the origins of the universe. Supercomputers allow researchers to study subatomic particle interactions that only exist for fractions of a second and to simulate the volatile conditions inside a combustion or turbine engine, enabling a level of detailed analysis unavailable through traditional experimental means.

The OLCF is home to the world’s fastest supercomputer for open science—the Frontier HPE-Cray EX—supported by world-class data management and analysis tools. In May 2022, the OLCF debuted Frontier as the world’s fastest and first exascale supercomputer, achieving 1.102 exaflops. That performance was updated in May 2023 to 1.194 exaflops, again in June 2024 to 1.206 exaflops, and then a final update in November 2024 to 1.353 exaflops. Frontier’s predecessor, the OLCF’s 200 petaflops Summit IBM AC922 system, debuted in June 2018, and was decommissioned in November 2024. Summit was still in the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world at the time of its decommissioning.