America's nuclear weapons to be tested by world's fastest supercomputer

Scientists have unveiled the world's fastest computer in California that will be used to secure America's nuclear weapons stockpile. 

The $600 million exascale supercomputer, called 'El Capitan,' is only the third of its kind in the world.

It's capable of performing 2.79 quintillion calculations per second. 

That's equivalent to the processing power of about one million high-end smartphones working simultaneously, researchers said. 

El Capitan launched at the Livermore National Laboratory (LNNL) in November 2024 and was officially announced to the public on January 9. 

It will primarily focus on national security, including nuclear data and weapon testing, high-energy-density physics, materials discovery and other sensitive or classified tasks. 

'El Capitan's capabilities help researchers ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the nation's nuclear stockpile in the absence of underground testing,' which has been prohibited since 1992,' scientists shared in a statement.

The supercomputer will do this by running sophisticated calculations that simulate nuclear detonations from the US' stockpile. 

This technological behemoth has the same square footage as a five to six bedroom mansion (6,000 square feet) and weighs as much as four blue whales (1.3 million pounds). 

'Because we stopped doing underground nuclear testing, we needed to replace that with something,' Pythagoras Watson, the team lead of the advanced technology system, told CBS News Bay Area.

Simulating detonations on very large computers like El Capitan will help experts understand how nuclear weapons age, whether the US' are still effective and what measures need to be taken to ensure they remain effective, Watson said. 

Most weapons in the current US stockpile were produced during the 1970s and 1980s, making them 55 to 65 years old, according to the Department of Energy.

Testing them with supercomputer simulations is a safe and effective way to make sure that the nation's nuclear weapons will work if ever there is a need to use them. 

Watson said LLNL is consistently collaborating with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory for the Department of Energy's Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan. 

But El Capitan will be used for other areas of interest as well, running simulations to support research on climate change, artificial intelligence, genetics and more. 

This supercomputer is also equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. While it is not solely designed to do this type of work, officials expect it will make full use of these emerging technologies. 

'While we're still exploring the full role AI will play, there's no doubt that it is going to improve our ability to do research and development that we need,' Livermore Lab deputy director Bradley Wallin told Axios. 

These techniques 'will benefit both unclassified and classified missions,' LNNL's statement reads. 

Construction on the machine began in May 2023, and El Capitan officially became the world's fastest computer when it came online last year with a score of 1.742 exaFLOPS in the High-Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark.

This test is used to evaluate a supercomputer's processing speed, and a score of 1.742 makes El Capitan only the third computer to ever reach exascale computing speeds. 

Exascale supercomputers are currently considered the fastest and most powerful in the world. El Capitan is roughly 18 times faster than LNNL's previous supercomputing system, Sierra. 

Watson is optimistic about the many ways that El Capitan will benefit the US and the rest of the world. 

'I really love the fact that this is actually something that really helps the country and the world ultimately in doing this research,' he said.