What is Exascale Computing?

Exascale computing refers to supercomputing systems that can calculate at least 1018 (one quintillion) operations per second. Industry experts anticipate we will reach this milestone sometime before the end of 2022. Exascale computing began as a speed milestone, but with the rampant growth in big data, the rapidly expanding digital transformation, and growing reliance on AI, focus has shifted to exascale’s ability to act as a foundation for a global infrastructure that can accommodate much larger workloads and extreme performance demands.

Why is Exascale Computing Important?

Once achieved, exascale computing can help humanity simulate and analyze the world in ways that will help solve our most pressing and complex challenges. It can profoundly change how we live and work, such as improving weather forecasting, healthcare, and drug development, and has important applications in areas of physics, genomics, sub-atomic structures and AI. Arm Neoverse is leading a revolution in high-performance computing (HPC), delivering technologies that power the world’s fastest supercomputer and enabling HPC in the cloud. Arm gives HPC designers technologies to drive performance in exascale-class CPUs and the design freedom to implement them independently.

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