Readings from the other desks

The HPC baseline is read through each steward’s lens, then once as a whole. Each lens is a projection of reviewed findings, not a separate argument. The other desks’ own editions of this subject are listed first, as cross-references, not copies.

15 min read0 figures8 tables35 notesNR-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE

Contents

6.1The other desks’ editions of this subject

Federation: each desk writes its own edition for the subjects in its remit. Until a desk releases, its edition shows its frame and the reading this edition printed for it.

Desk	Edition	State
GCRI Systems Evidence	No edition of this subject at this desk in the 2026 Baseline cycle	Not in this cycle
GRF Public Deliberation	Outside this desk’s remit	Not in remit
GRA Capital Readiness	Outside this desk’s remit	Not in remit
Standards Progress	No edition of this subject at this desk in the 2026 Baseline cycle	Not in this cycle
Academy Capability	No edition of this subject at this desk in the 2026 Baseline cycle	Not in this cycle
Index Measurement	Outside this desk’s remit	Not in remit

6.2Three lenses

One edition, read by each steward. The lens of this site comes first.

GCRI · KEY T

Technical Truth

The evidence supports reading HPC as physical infrastructure. Systems are large and efficient designs exist, while facility energy and water, chip supply and workforce are thinly measured. Evidence is strongest for public lists and weakest for supply and skills.

INF-001 · ENE-004 · ENE-006 · SYS-012

GRF · KEY M

Public Meaning

For most people the HPC story arrives as a headline about a faster machine or a data centre. The baseline asks that public debate separate list entries from useful work, and keep power and water in view.

INF-001 · ENE-004 · ENE-006

GRA · KEY F

Capital Meaning

Readiness implications only. Public programmes carry the largest systems, and policy sets access to chips¹⁷¹³. These show where finance-readiness evidence will matter. Nothing here is advice, a rating or an approval.

FIN-010 · GOV-007

NEXUS

Synthesis

HPC is well described by lists and thinly measured as a system. The 2027 programme should bind facility energy and water, publish a comparable footprint and test the power and siting pathway.

SYS-012 · H-01 · H-02

6.3Standards, Academy and steward contributions

How the Nexus Standards drafts, the Risk Academy and the three stewards feed each quarterly edition for HPC. The standards are a preparatory working draft (2026) and are cited as drafts, never as adopted standards.

Table 6.1The quarterly rhythm every edition follows
Quarter	Edition	Question	Boundary
Q1	State and Agenda	What matters this year, and what is the starting position?	observed baseline stays distinct from planned work
Q2	Evidence and Build	What new evidence and capability exist?	a configured capability is not a validated result
Q3	Stress Test and Readiness	What do scenarios and tests show?	simulated loss or performance is not observed impact
Q4	Annual Synthesis and Renewal	What changed in the year, and what renews?	release follows review, not event publicity deadlines

Table 6.2Who contributes what each quarter
Steward or body	Role	Contribution route
The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI Canada)	Lead Institution and Consortium Secretariat; publisher of record; technical truth (key T)	science and practice communities · GCRI gateway
The Global Risks Forum (GRF)	leadership, dialogue and the Universe programme; public meaning (key M)	policy, Universe and national adoption · GRF gateway
The Global Risks Alliance (GRA)	finance, insurance and development readiness; capital meaning (key F)	finance and insurance · GRA gateway
Nexus Standards	preparatory drafts on vocabulary, hazards, indicators and methods	Standards site · working groups HAZ, IND, MTH, FIN, AI
Risk Academy	learning pathways tied to the agenda questions	Academy gateway · learning by review
Nexus Standards and Academy	technology chapter inputs: GCRI evidence, NXS standards, RA capability	technology editorial board

Standards drafts used in this edition

Risk vocabulary NRS-C1 (424 terms) for terms in the glossary
Hazard atlas NHS-1 1.1.0 (905 hazards in 120 families) for risk objects
Seven risk classes: global, catastrophic, existential, emerging, planetary, exponential, frontier-tech

Standards calendar to watch

Founding calls from 20 October 2026; working groups meet from 5 November 2026
Inaugural Global Standards Council session, 12 January 2027
Quarterly reviews in March, June, September and December, aligned with each edition

6.4GCRI reading: the model card

GCRI’s reading of this edition is its model card: what the national model is, what it computes and where it stops. It is printed in full in Annex A, with the methods it belongs to. Annex A, methodology

6.5Global Risks Forum reading: editorial essays

Four signed essays by the Reports editorial team set out the positions this edition takes. They are interpretation, labelled as such; the evidence they draw on is in the findings register.

A list entry shows a benchmark result. The power, cooling, chips and rules behind it are less visible. Reading HPC as infrastructure brings them into view without judging any system.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 01

Speed is the visible part

Linpack, HPCG and mixed-precision tables lead to different systems. Reading them together avoids single-number claims.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 02

Different benchmarks, different leaders

Small systems lead on efficiency, while the load of data centres grows. Both facts hold and neither settles the footprint of large systems.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 03

Efficiency and demand move apart

Licence rules, reporting schemes and national plans are being set while facility energy and water remain unmeasured on a common basis.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 04

Rules arrive before measurements

6.6Global Risks Alliance reading: 2027 HPC readiness pack

The registers that open the 2027 global cycle. At baseline each is initialised from this edition.

Table 6.32027 HPC readiness pack
Item	Register	State at baseline	First 2027 entry
E1	HPC risk state delta	baseline set by this edition	changes against the baseline
E2	WEFH+B state delta	five global system readings set	indicator updates and freshness
E3	Agenda and Portfolio movement	eight agenda items · 6 proposed objects	admission decisions
E4	Federation delivery register	national chapters in preparation	national chapters
E5	Consortium capability register	national consortia forming	first contributions
E6	Leadership questions and challenges	none yet	first challenge log
E7	Foundry technical state	national environments prepared	first federation cut
E8	Publication candidates	twelve findings carried forward	PUBLISH · HOLD dispositions
E9	Universe readiness	one candidate mission	admission and role spine
E10	Correction register	none	first federation-wide cycle

Publication dispositions

Publish
Hold
Needs evidence
Restricted
Superseded

6.7Nexus Standards reading: standards and regulatory watch

Instruments and published guidance that shape the systems in this edition, by status on the retrieval date. The edition assesses no one’s compliance.

IN FORCE
PUBLISHED
DRAFT
PUBLISHED · VOLUNTARY

Table 6.4Standards and regulatory watch
Instrument	Body	Scope	Status	Relevance
MPI 5.0¹⁶	MPI Forum	global	PUBLISHED 2025	message passing
OpenMP 6.0¹⁵	OpenMP Architecture Review Board	global	PUBLISHED 2024	shared-memory parallelism
OpenMP technical report 15¹⁵	OpenMP Architecture Review Board	global	DRAFT 2026	public comment draft of 6.1
Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364³⁴	European Commission	EU	IN FORCE	data centre reporting scheme
EU data centre rating scheme³⁵	European Commission	EU	DRAFT 2026	preparatory working draft (2026)
ISO/IEC 30134-2³⁶	ISO and IEC	global	PUBLISHED · VOLUNTARY	power usage effectiveness
BIS advanced computing due diligence rule¹³³³	US Department of Commerce	US	PUBLISHED 2025	licence and designer timeline
EU Chips Act, Regulation (EU) 2023/1781²⁵	European Union	EU	IN FORCE	semiconductor policy
EuroHPC Council Regulations 2024/1732 and 2026/150¹¹	Council of the EU	EU	IN FORCE	joint undertaking budget
TOP500 and Green500 list rules¹³	TOP500 project	global	PUBLISHED · VOLUNTARY	list submission

Changed since 2024

BIS extended the authorised designer timeline to 31 December 2026 on 7 April 2026¹³
The Commission proposed a data centre rating scheme in September 2026, in draft³⁵
The MPI Forum voted MPI 5.0 through on 5 June 2025¹⁶

To watch in 2027

The EU data centre rating scheme, subject to scrutiny³⁵
OpenMP 6.1 after public comment¹⁵
Further BIS guidance on advanced computing items¹³

6.8Risk Academy reading: literature and evidence review, science and assessments

The review behind this edition covers HPC assessments, peer-reviewed science and the institutional reports that bind its findings. Systematic reviews for each agenda item begin in 2027.

Review protocol

Question: What does the published evidence establish about HPC and advanced computing as infrastructure and its couplings?
Sources searched: peer-reviewed journals and preprints; benchmark lists; standards forums and agencies; programme and funding pages
Window: releases available at evidence close, 30 September 2026
Selection: sources that bind or contextualise a finding in this edition
Next step: systematic reviews for agenda items 01 to 05 in 2027

Table 6.5Peer-reviewed science and preprints
Reference	Type	Year	Role	Used for
Patterson et al.¹⁸	preprint	2021	supports	footprint of model training
Luccioni, Viguier and Ligozat²⁰	preprint	2022	supports	life-cycle footprint of one model
Luccioni, Jernite and Strubell¹⁹	conference paper	2024	supports	cost of inference
Koomey et al.³⁸	journal article	2011	context	efficiency trends
Shalf³⁹	journal article	2020	context	limits of scaling
Dennard et al.⁴⁰	journal article	1974	framework	scaling rules
Dongarra, Luszczek and Petitet³⁷	journal article	2003	framework	Linpack benchmark

Table 6.6Benchmark and list sources
Reference	Issuer	Year	Role	Used for
TOP500 list, June 2026¹	TOP500 project	2026	supports	system results
TOP500 list, November 2025²	TOP500 project	2025	context	earlier list
Green500 list, June 2026³	TOP500 project	2026	supports	efficiency
TOP500 release, June 2026⁴	TOP500 project	2026	supports	LineShine, HPCG, HPL-MxP
TOP500 highlights⁵	TOP500 project	2026	supports	list totals
TOP500 news page⁶	TOP500 project	2026	context	list dates

Table 6.7Standards, policy and strategies
Reference	Issuer	Year	Role	Used for
BIS notices¹³	US Department of Commerce	2026	supports	export rules
EuroHPC pages¹⁰¹¹	EuroHPC Joint Undertaking	2026	supports	programme and budget
UK action plan²³	UK Government	2025	supports	compute plan
EU Chips Act page²⁵	European Commission	2026	supports	chips policy
DOE Genesis pages²⁶²⁷	US Department of Energy	2026	context	national platform

Table 6.8Programmes, funding and field overviews
Reference	Issuer	Year	Role	Used for
Exascale Computing Project¹⁷	DOE programme	2024	supports	programme cost
CHIPS and Science Act⁴³	US Congress	2022	supports	chips funding
DOE news item¹²	US Department of Energy	2024	supports	data centre energy
IEA Energy and AI²⁸	IEA	2025	context	demand estimate
RIKEN FugakuNEXT page¹⁴	RIKEN	2025	context	national plan
CSCS Alps page²¹	CSCS	2024	context	system description
NAIRR pilot page²²	NSF and partners	2026	context	shared access

Where the evidence agrees

Five systems reach or pass one exaflop on Linpack¹⁴
Efficiency leaders are small systems today³⁵
Facility energy and water are not yet reported on a common basis¹²³⁴

Where it is unsettled

How large the footprint of the largest systems and their facilities is¹¹²
How capacity outside public lists compares with listed capacity³⁰
How benchmark results map to useful scientific output⁴⁵³⁷

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

17Exascale Computing Project (ed.), project site (2016 to 2024; USD 1.8 billion; about 2,800 collaborators; concluded). US Department of Energy, Oak Ridge. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13US Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (ed.), BIS homepage (notice of 16 January 2025 on advanced computing integrated circuits; extension of 7 April 2026 to 31 December 2026; guidance of May 2026 on Country Group D:5 and Macau; full texts not opened). BIS, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
16MPI Forum (ed.), MPI documents (index page; MPI 5.0 voted through 5 June 2025; MPI 4.1 of 2 November 2023). Message Passing Interface Forum. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15OpenMP Architecture Review Board (ed.), OpenMP specifications (index page; version 6.0 of November 2024; technical report 15 as a public comment draft of 6.1, July 2026). OpenMP ARB, Urbana. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
34UNVERIFIED, not opened: European Commission, Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364 of 14 March 2024 on the first phase of the establishment of a common Union rating scheme for data centres (500 kW threshold, annual reporting by 15 May), taken from law firm summaries; EUR-Lex returned no content. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
35UNVERIFIED, not opened: POST-CLOSE, context only: Noerr (ed.), note of October 2026 on the proposal of 21 September 2026 for a delegated regulation on an EU data centre rating scheme with grades A to G from 2027, taken from search-result summaries; preparatory working draft (2026). Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
36UNVERIFIED, not opened: ISO and IEC (eds.), ISO/IEC 30134-2 Information technology, Data centres key performance indicators, Part 2: Power usage effectiveness, cited from memory. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
33UNVERIFIED, not opened: US Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security, Implementation of Additional Export Controls: Certain Advanced Computing Items; Supercomputer and Semiconductor End Use (Federal Register, 25 October 2023), not retrieved; the page redirected. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
25European Commission (ed.), European Chips Act (policy page; Regulation (EU) 2023/1781 in force 21 September 2023; 19 State aid decisions over EUR 33 billion; Chips Act 2.0 proposed June 2026). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), Discover EuroHPC JU (about page; budget of at least EUR 8.2 billion for 2021 to 2027; Council Regulations 2021/1173, 2024/1732 and 2026/150). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
1TOP500 (ed.), TOP500 list, June 2026, 67th edition (list page; top systems, Rmax, Rpeak, cores and power). TOP500 project, Hamburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3TOP500 (ed.), Green500 list, June 2026 (list page; top five by gigaflops per watt). TOP500 project, Hamburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18Patterson, D. et al., Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training, arXiv:2104.10350, submitted 21 April 2021 (abstract page). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2021. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
20Luccioni, A.S., Viguier, S. and Ligozat, A.-L., Estimating the Carbon Footprint of BLOOM, a 176B Parameter Language Model, arXiv:2211.02001, submitted 3 November 2022 (abstract page; about 24.7 tonnes CO2eq dynamic, about 50.5 tonnes life cycle). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
19Luccioni, A.S., Jernite, Y. and Strubell, E., Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?, ACM FAccT 2024, arXiv preprint of November 2023 (abstract page). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
38UNVERIFIED, not opened: Koomey, J.G. et al., Implications of historical trends in the electrical efficiency of computing, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 33(3), 46 to 54, 2011, cited from memory. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
39UNVERIFIED, not opened: Shalf, J., The future of computing beyond Moore’s Law, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 378, 20190061, 2020, cited from memory. Observation year 2020. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
40UNVERIFIED, not opened: Dennard, R.H. et al., Design of ion-implanted MOSFET’s with very small physical dimensions, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 9(5), 256 to 268, 1974, cited from memory. Observation year 1974. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
37UNVERIFIED, not opened: Dongarra, J.J., Luszczek, P. and Petitet, A., The LINPACK Benchmark: past, present and future, Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience 15, 803 to 820, 2003, cited from memory. Observation year 2003. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2TOP500 (ed.), TOP500 list, November 2025, 66th edition (list page; top systems, Rmax, Rpeak, power). TOP500 project, Hamburg. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4TOP500 (ed.), LineShine Debuts at No. 1 as the TOP500 Enters a New Global Exascale Era (news release, 23 June 2026; LineShine, HPCG, HPL-MxP, Green500 values). TOP500 project, Hamburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5TOP500 (ed.), Highlights, June 2026 (list totals, accelerator and processor shares, HPCG and HPL-MxP tables; the page gives some figures that differ from the list page). TOP500 project, Hamburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6POST-CLOSE, context only: TOP500 (ed.), TOP500 news index (headlines and dates of the lists of November 2024, June 2025, November 2025 and June 2026; no November 2026 list at page read). TOP500 project, Hamburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), AI Factories (programme page; 19 AI Factories and 13 antennas stated; the page lists 18 sites and 15 antennas). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
23UK Government (ed.), AI Opportunities Action Plan (page; expand the AI Research Resource by at least 20 times by 2030; non-AI HPC and exascale flagged as unresolved; no budget figure). Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
26POST-CLOSE, context only: US Department of Energy (ed.), Genesis Mission (programme page; goal of 100,000 science and technology professionals over a decade; announcements dated August to October 2026; no systems named). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
27Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ed.), The Genesis Mission (page; Lux and Discovery listed with one-line descriptions only). Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
43US Congress (ed.), CHIPS and Science Act, Public Law 117-167, Division A, section 102 (statute text, enacted 9 August 2022; CHIPS for America Fund appropriations for fiscal years 2022 to 2026 sum to USD 50 billion, of which USD 39 billion for incentives and USD 11 billion for research). Government Publishing Office, Washington. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (news item, 20 December 2024; 176 TWh in 2023, 4.4% of US electricity; 6.7% to 12% projected for 2028). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
28UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (2025; about 415 TWh for data centres in 2024, about 945 TWh in 2030), taken from press and search-result summaries; the IEA pages returned an access error. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14RIKEN (ed.), FugakuNEXT project with Fujitsu and NVIDIA (news item, 22 August 2025; MONAKA-X CPU, NVIDIA GPU; more than 5 times hardware performance; up to 100 times application performance in about 40 MW; more than 600 exaflops FP8 sparse; operation around 2030). RIKEN, Wako. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
21Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (ed.), Alps (system page; 2,688 Grace-Hopper nodes; 434.9 petaflops; inaugurated September 2024). CSCS, Lugano. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
22National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Pilot (ed.), NAIRR pilot site (more than 950 projects; 14 federal agencies; 26 non-governmental partners; Operations Center award of 1 September 2026). US National Science Foundation, Alexandria. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
30UNVERIFIED, not opened: HPCwire (ed.), Surprise: Chinese LineShine takes number 1 on TOP500 (23 June 2026), and press coverage that China had stopped submitting to the list in 2023, taken from search-result summaries; the HPCwire page returned an access error. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
24POST-CLOSE, context only: Post-close, context only: NIST (ed.), CHIPS for America (programme page; USD 50 billion; USD 11 billion research and USD 39 billion incentives; awards of September and October 2026 listed). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

Cite this chapter

Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). Chapter 6: Readings from the other desks. In Exponential Technology Report 2026: HPC and Advanced Computing (Baseline Edition 2026, Report No. NR-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE) [Draft under review]. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI).

Every citation form of the whole report, BibTeX and RIS included, is on the edition home. Cite this report

Name	Purpose	Duration	Party
`wordpress_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	Until you sign out	First party
`wordpress_logged_in_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	Until you sign out, or 14 days	First party
`wordpress_sec_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	Until you sign out, or 14 days	First party
`wordpress_test_cookie`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	Session	First party
`wp-settings-*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	1 year	First party
`wp-postpass_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	10 days	First party
`comment_author_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	About 347 days	First party
`wpEmojiSettingsSupports`browser storage	Strictly necessaryThis site	Session	First party
`nexus_consent`cookie	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	180 days	First party
`nexus_consent_id`cookie	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	180 days	First party
`nexus_consent_reset`cookie	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	Session	First party
`wp_consent_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	180 days	First party
`nexus_consent`browser storage	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	180 days	First party
`nx_theme`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`nexus.theme.default`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`bx-color-mode`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`bx-color-mode-against`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`nexus.embed.theme`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`buddyx_dark_mode`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`buddyx_color_mode_against`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`nexus.a11y`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`nexus.dock`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`bp-activity`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party
`bp-groups`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party
`bp-members`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party
`bp-blogs`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party
`bp-messages`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party