South Korea ranks ninth in global supercomputer power

South Korea ranks seventh worldwide in the number of supercomputers and ninth in total computing capacity, according to the latest list of the world’s top 500 high-performance systems.

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) announced Thursday that it is taking part in the 2025 International Supercomputing Conference, held from Tuesday to Friday (local time). The conference draws global experts in high-performance computing, and the rankings are updated twice a year based on system performance.

“El Capitan,” from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, topped the global list for the second time after ranking first in November. It delivers 1.74 exaflops (EF), or 100 quintillion calculations per second. It was followed by “Frontier” (1.35 EF) from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and “Aurora” (1.01 EF) from Argonne National Laboratory. These are the only systems worldwide currently operating at the exaflop level.

South Korea had 15 systems on the list, placing it seventh in quantity and ninth in total performance. Samsung Electronics’ “SSC-24” was the highest-ranked Korean system at No. 18, followed by NAVER’s “Sejong” (50th) and Kakao’s “Kakao Cloud” (52nd). KISTI’s fifth-generation supercomputer, “Nurion,” came in at No. 109.

The South Korean government plans to install a sixth-generation supercomputer at KISTI. The new system will be 23 times more powerful than its predecessor, delivering 600 petaflops (PF), or 1,000 trillion calculations per second.


최지원기자 jwchoi@donga.com