In this episode we are looking at computers going fast. ‘Exascale’ means a computer is running a billion, billion operations every second.

At the 2024 ISC high-performance conference in Hamburg, Germany, the world’s second exascale machine was officially recognised: The Aurora supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory officially broke the exascale barrier at 1.012 exaflops. So why does exascale matter, and why is it so difficult to achieve? Joining us to discuss is Susan Coghlan, Project Director of the Aurora exascale computer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois.

This is Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Every week we look at a story that's been making headlines, take a look at the technology behind it, and explain why it matters to organizations and what we can learn from it.

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About the expert: https://www.anl.gov/profile/susan-m-coghlan

Sources and statistics cited in this episode:
Top500 list of the fastest supercomputers: https://top500.org/
Argonne National Laboratory: https://www.anl.gov/
Quantum navigation flight: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/un-jammable-quantum-tech-takes-flight-to-boost-uks-resilience-against-hostile-actors