The Intel-powered Aurora supercomputer was widely expected to take the top spot from the AMD-powered Frontier, the #1 supercomputer on the Top500 list, but it took second place instead. However, Aurora did take the top spot in the AI-centric HPL-MxP mixed-precision benchmark, allowing Intel to lay claim to powering the fastest AI supercomputer in the world with 10.6 AI Exaflops of performance.
It's noteworthy that Aurora is still not fully operational, so the entire system wasn't used for any of the benchmark submissions. Aurora remains beset by numerous hardware issues like hardware and cooling system failures, operational errors, and network instability, among others (details in the last section below). The continued issues are a bit surprising—the system was first announced nine years ago, the second revision was announced five years ago (the first version was canceled), and the final components were installed eleven months ago.
