Exponential Technology Report 2026: HPC and Advanced Computing

S.1Abstract

S.2Key messages

Six readings that frame the HPC baseline, and the eight questions this edition answers, each with its status and source.

1. LineShine, with 2.198 exaflops on Linpack.¹⁴

   Which system leads the June 2026 list?Reported

2. Five at or above one exaflop; JUPITER is listed at exactly 1.000.¹⁴

   How many systems reach an exaflop?Reported

3. From 15.8 to 42.2 megawatts for the five largest.¹

   How much power do the largest systems draw?Reported

4. A 46 kilowatt system at 73.282 gigaflops per watt.³⁵

   Who leads on efficiency?Reported

5. US data centres used 4.4% of electricity in 2023.¹²

   How large is the wider data centre load?Reported

6. BIS extended a timeline to the end of 2026 and issued guidance in May 2026.¹³

   What do export rules do now?Reported

7. EuroHPC lists a budget of at least EUR 8.2 billion for 2021 to 2027.¹¹

   What does Europe fund?Reported

8. Power and siting limits against fast-growing demand. SCN-XT07-PWR-01

   What will 2027 test first?Expert input

S.3Headline finding

ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-INF-001

LineShine, a CPU-only system at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, entered the June 2026 TOP500 list at first place with 2.198 exaflops on Linpack.

The list now holds five systems at or above one exaflop, on three continents. LineShine draws about 42.2 megawatts for 52.07 gigaflops per watt, and the page lists it as CPU-only⁴. China had not submitted systems for some years, according to search summaries, so earlier lists did not show all capacity³⁰. Linpack is one benchmark, and LineShine leads HPCG while El Capitan leads the mixed-precision table⁵.

S.4At a glance

S.5What each steward reads in it

S.6What this edition is, and is not

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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

1.1The questions this part answers

Key questions

• Where is HPC risk concentrated?
• Which couplings carry HPC shocks into other systems?
• Which HPC capabilities hold under compound stress?
• What must 2027 evidence measure first?

In this part

• Narrative
• Headline finding
• Lead figure
• Five footprint and governance chapters
• Twelve-domain reading
• Sector screens
• Dependency matrix
• Risk objects
• Capability ladder
• Scenario
• Three lenses
• Portfolio

1.2The argument

1.3Twenty couplings between five systems

The HPC-centred matrix types the twenty couplings between the five core systems, read for their HPC content. Strengths are Nexus estimates (ESTIMATED) from the cited evidence and analogue events; they set the graph that 2027 evidence will test.

Transmission paths

1. 01

   ENE → INF

   Facility power and cooling limit siting and scale.

   Reported power of the five largest systems¹

2. 02

   TRD → INF

   Licence rules shape access to advanced computing items.

   Reported BIS timeline and guidance¹³

3. 03

   FIN → INF

   Public programmes fund systems and software.

   Reported ECP and EuroHPC budgets¹⁷¹¹

4. 04

   INF → ENE

   Accelerated systems add load to data centres.

   Inferred 276 accelerated systems⁵; US share¹²

5. 05

   GOV → ENE

   Reporting rules make facility energy visible.

   Inferred EU delegated regulation³⁴

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

1. 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
2. 9EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), JUPITER launching Europe’s exascale era (news item, 5 September 2025; about 24,000 GH200 superchips; warm-water cooling; funding shares; power and budget not stated). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 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

2.1Headline finding

ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-INF-001

LineShine, a CPU-only system at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, entered the June 2026 TOP500 list at first place with 2.198 exaflops on Linpack.

Implication

The list now holds five systems at or above one exaflop, on three continents. LineShine draws about 42.2 megawatts for 52.07 gigaflops per watt, and the page lists it as CPU-only⁴. China had not submitted systems for some years, according to search summaries, so earlier lists did not show all capacity³⁰. Linpack is one benchmark, and LineShine leads HPCG while El Capitan leads the mixed-precision table⁵.

What would move it

The November 2026 list, independent descriptions of LineShine and further submissions would each move this finding.

2.2Infrastructure

1. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-INF-001

   LineShine, a new system at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, entered the June 2026 TOP500 list at first place with 2.198 exaflops on Linpack, 13,789,440 cores and about 42.2 megawatts of power.¹⁴³⁰

2. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-INF-002

   The combined performance of the June 2026 TOP500 list is 18.73 exaflops, up from 14.99 six months before, and 276 of 500 systems use accelerators, up from 255.⁵

3. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-INF-003

   Benchmarks give different readings: El Capitan leads the mixed-precision HPL-MxP table at 16.7 exaflops, and LineShine leads HPCG at 22.00 petaflops.⁴⁵

4. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-INF-009

   JUPITER, inaugurated on 5 September 2025, uses about 24,000 NVIDIA GH200 superchips, warm-water cooling with heat reuse, and reached exactly 1.000 exaflops on Linpack.⁹¹²

2.3Energy

1. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-ENE-004

   The Green500 leader, KAIROS, reached 73.282 gigaflops per watt at 46 kilowatts, against 60.94 for El Capitan and 52.07 for LineShine.³⁴⁵

2. ReportedEQL 2NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-ENE-005

   The IEA is reported to estimate that data centres used about 415 terawatt-hours in 2024 and could use about 945 terawatt-hours in 2030, in press and search summaries.²⁸

3. ReportedEQL 3NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-ENE-006

   US data centres used 176 terawatt-hours in 2023, 4.4% of national electricity, and a DOE news item gives a 2028 range of 6.7% to 12%.¹²²⁹

2.4Governance

1. ReportedEQL 3NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-GOV-007

   BIS extended its authorised designer timeline for advanced computing chips to 31 December 2026 on 7 April 2026 and issued guidance in May 2026 on licences for entities headquartered in Country Group D:5 or Macau.¹³³³

2. ReportedEQL 3NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-GOV-008

   EuroHPC reports a budget of at least EUR 8.2 billion for 2021 to 2027 and lists 19 AI Factories and 13 antennas, though the page names 18 sites and 15 antennas.¹⁰¹¹

3. ReportedEQL 3NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-GOV-011

   RIKEN, Fujitsu and NVIDIA plan FugakuNEXT for around 2030, with more than 5 times the hardware performance of Fugaku and up to 100 times the application performance in about the same 40 megawatts.¹⁴⁴¹

2.5Finance

1. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-FIN-010

   The US Exascale Computing Project cost USD 1.8 billion from 2016 to 2024, and the CHIPS and Science Act gave USD 50 billion to Commerce for semiconductor programmes.¹⁷⁴³

2.6Systemic

1. Expert inputEQL 2NRF-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-SYS-012

   The leading compound pathway for 2027 testing is power and siting limits on large systems meeting fast-growing demand, while export controls and unlisted systems make capacity hard to see. § scenario

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 9EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), JUPITER launching Europe’s exascale era (news item, 5 September 2025; about 24,000 GH200 superchips; warm-water cooling; funding shares; power and budget not stated). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 29UNVERIFIED, not opened: Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, December 2024; figures taken from a DOE news item [12]; the report pages returned an access error. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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
14. 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
15. 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
16. 41UNVERIFIED, not opened: DatacenterDynamics and The Next Platform (eds.), reports on FugakuNEXT (development budget above 110 billion yen, FP64 peak goal above 2.6 exaflops), taken from search-result summaries. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
17. 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
18. 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

3.1Where each system stood at evidence close

3.2Domain posture

Each of the twelve coupled domains is read through HPC, in words, not scored. The coupling column names the dependency that carries HPC risk into each domain.

3.3Sector screens

All sixteen sectors are screened for their dependence on HPC, on the same grammar as every national edition. The evidence column describes coverage of the baseline evidence, not the performance of the sector.

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 9EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), JUPITER launching Europe’s exascale era (news item, 5 September 2025; about 24,000 GH200 superchips; warm-water cooling; funding shares; power and budget not stated). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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

4.1Risk objects

Each risk is read across the chain from hazard to consequence, with its status and evidence-quality level.

1. InferredEQL 3RSK-XT07-ENE-001

   Power and siting limits for large systems

   Driver

   tens of megawatts per system and growing data centre load¹¹²

   Exposure

   grid connections; host regions; research sites

   Vulnerability

   single-site dependence; long lead times for power

   Capacity

   efficient designs and heat reuse³⁹

   Cascade

   ENE → INF

   Horizon

   1 to 5 years

2. InferredEQL 3RSK-XT07-GOV-002

   Fragmented controls and hidden capacity

   Driver

   licence rules and guidance; systems that do not submit to lists¹³³⁰

   Exposure

   research collaboration; supply chains

   Vulnerability

   uneven access to chips and skills

   Capacity

   public lists, standards forums and national plans^1151623

   Cascade

   GOV → INF, FIN

   Horizon

   1 to 5 years

3. Expert inputEQL 2RSK-XT07-INF-003

   Benchmarks read alone

   Driver

   different benchmarks give different leaders⁴⁵

   Exposure

   planning and public debate

   Vulnerability

   single-number comparisons

   Capacity

   benchmark tables read together⁵

   Cascade

   INF → FIN

   Horizon

   1 to 5 years

4. InferredEQL 2RSK-XT07-FIN-004

   Dependence on a few public programmes

   Driver

   large public budgets for a few systems¹⁷¹¹⁴³

   Exposure

   national laboratories; software teams

   Vulnerability

   programme end dates; budget cycles

   Capacity

   continuing funding lines and software stacks¹⁷

   Cascade

   FIN → INF

   Horizon

   5 to 10 years

4.2Capability ladder

Existence is not readiness. Each of the fifteen capability functions is placed on the ladder by the strongest public evidence for HPC at the global level.

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 9EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), JUPITER launching Europe’s exascale era (news item, 5 September 2025; about 24,000 GH200 superchips; warm-water cooling; funding shares; power and budget not stated). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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
17. 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
18. 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

5.1Assumptions

Scenario SCN-XT07-PWR-01: what is assumed, and what is held constant.

Baseline

the 2026 reference state in this edition

Drivers

demand for large systems and data centres grows while grid connections and cooling capacity grow more slowly

Analogues

the 2023 US share of 4.4% and the 2028 range of 6.7% to 12%¹²

Interventions

none modelled: the specification describes the unmitigated case

Run state

narrative specification; quantified run scheduled for 2027

5.2The cascade, step by step

1. 1

   ENE → INF

   new systems of 15 to 40 megawatts compete for grid connections

   2026

2. 2

   INF → ENE

   accelerated systems raise facility load

   2026

3. 3

   GOV → ENE

   reporting rules make load visible to regulators

   2026

4. 4

   TRD → INF

   licence rules shape where new hardware can go

   2026

5. 5

   FIN → INF

   public programmes favour sites with power and cooling

   2024

6. 6

   INF → CLI

   electricity demand adds to emissions where grids are carbon-intensive

   2026

5.3The scenario as a table of steps

How the shock in scenario SCN-XT07-PWR-01 would travel through HPC and Advanced Computing’s coupled systems, step by step, under the assumptions the edition states.

A teaching model of a conditional scenario under the edition’s stated assumptions: not a forecast, not a prediction and not a warning. Sources: HPC and Advanced Computing 2026, scenario SCN-XT07-PWR-01 (2026); HPC and Advanced Computing 2026, references (NR-CIT-1) (2026).

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

1. 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

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.

6.2Three lenses

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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
17. 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
18. 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
19. 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
20. 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
21. 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
22. 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
23. 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
24. 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
25. 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
26. 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
27. 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
28. 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
29. 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
30. 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
31. 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
32. 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
33. 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
34. 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
35. 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

7.1Questions for the operational series

1. H-01

   What do the largest systems and the facilities around them draw in power and cooling water, and how does that compare with efficiency leaders?

   INI-XT07-PWR-01 · power and cooling footprint; first output: footprint table by system.

2. H-02

   How much of the demand on data centres comes from scientific systems, and how much from commercial AI workloads?

   INI-XT07-DEM-02 · demand split; first output: demand note.

3. H-03

   Which chips, memory and fabrication steps are single points of failure for large systems?

   INI-XT07-SUP-03 · accelerator and memory supply; first output: dependence map.

4. H-04

   How can capacity be seen when systems do not submit to public lists?

   INI-XT07-VIS-04 · visible and unlisted capacity; first output: visibility table.

5. H-05

   How can benchmark results be read together, given that Linpack, HPCG and mixed-precision tables differ?

   INI-XT07-BMK-05 · benchmarks read together; first output: benchmark table.

6. H-06

   Which national and regional rules set data centre reporting, and how do they differ?

   To be admitted in 2027; first output: rule overlay.

7. H-07

   What workforce exists for operating, programming and securing large systems?

   To be admitted in 2027; first output: scoping note.

8. H-08

   Which readiness capabilities have been tested in real shortages or outages, and which are only planned?

   Readiness capability register; first output: rung evidence for 15 functions.

7.2Portfolio proposed for the Q1 2027 alignment

Five initiatives and one Universe mission candidate are proposed for the 2027 HPC portfolio. They are programme objects: no partner, funder or member is attached to them in this edition.

7.3The pathway

The HPC edition reads national readiness chapters, the coupled sector reports on energy, minerals and cybersecurity, and the global edition through one governed evidence graph. At baseline the federation is designed; the global energy and lifeline editions are drafted. This page states what exists today and what comes next.

1. 01

   National readiness chapters

   computing and facility readiness in each national edition

   IN PREPARATION · national baselines

2. 02

   Sector couplings

   GS-02 energy · XT-06 semiconductors and AI compute · SR-04 minerals

   GS-02 DRAFTED · sector baselines

3. 03

   Technology system model

   systems, power, cooling, chips, funding, governance

   v0 SPECIFIED · v1 with federation evidence

4. 04

   Strategic links

   SR-02 lifeline systems · SR-13 strategic technology

   PLANNED · strategic baselines

5. 05

   Universe

   annual proving environment

   CANDIDATE MISSION · mandate in 2027

6. 06

   XT-07 report

   this series

   BASELINE DRAFT · 2027 annual edition

7. 07

   Evidence and correction

   one graph, many projections

   OPEN · first correction cycle in 2027

7.4Universe 2027: evidence pack for the HPC candidate mission

1. 01

   Mandate

2. 02

   Core Build · 1 month

3. 03

   Action · 1 week

4. 04

   Evidence seal

5. 05

   Portfolio correction

6. 06

   Next mandate

Mission

ID

MSN-XT07-2027-01 · Power and siting Universe mission

Role spine

Leadership sponsor · Institutional anchor · Mission lead: drawn from national pathways

Receiving actors

to be identified with the mandate

7.5Handoffs and routing

Where the baseline’s findings go next. A handoff routes a finding for awareness, review or work; it transfers no authority.

7.6Feeds and signal register

Escalation routes

• none · keep monitoring
• research question
• project
• risk object
• annual publication
• signal report

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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

8.1Systems and compute platforms

Large systems are listed twice a year. Evidence is strongest where a public list exists, and weakest for systems that do not submit.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• XT-01 Artificial Intelligence and Agentic Systems
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-08 Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing
• XT-02 Quantum Technologies

8.2Power, cooling and data centres

The five largest systems draw tens of megawatts. Efficiency leaders are small systems, and the wider data centre load is growing.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• XT-01 Artificial Intelligence and Agentic Systems
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-08 Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing
• XT-02 Quantum Technologies

8.3Chips, memory and fabrication

Large systems depend on chips and memory made in a few places. Policy pages show large public programmes, and supply figures are not bound.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• XT-01 Artificial Intelligence and Agentic Systems
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-08 Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing
• XT-02 Quantum Technologies

8.4Economy, investment and workforce

Public programmes carry the largest systems. Workforce figures are the thin part of the evidence.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• XT-01 Artificial Intelligence and Agentic Systems
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-08 Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing
• XT-02 Quantum Technologies

8.5Security, export controls and governance watch

Rules on advanced computing items are being adjusted in steps, and reporting rules for data centres are being drafted.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• XT-01 Artificial Intelligence and Agentic Systems
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-08 Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing
• XT-02 Quantum Technologies

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 7Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (ed.), Frontier (system page; 1.6 exaflops peak; 74 cabinets; delivered 2021; the page value differs from the peak on the list page). Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 8Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (ed.), compute systems (index page; Lux and Discovery labelled as introduced; no specifications). Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 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
7. 31UNVERIFIED, not opened: Argonne National Laboratory (ed.), Genesis Mission systems (Solstice and Equinox; reported plans of 100,000 and 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, vendor-stated AI performance figures), taken from search-result summaries that disagree on dates; the page returned an access error. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 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
9. 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
10. 9EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), JUPITER launching Europe’s exascale era (news item, 5 September 2025; about 24,000 GH200 superchips; warm-water cooling; funding shares; power and budget not stated). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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
17. 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
18. 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
19. 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
20. 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
21. 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
22. 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
23. 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
24. 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
25. 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

A.1Methods

The global baseline uses published values and four simple derivations. Each is shown in full so that any reader can reproduce it.

A.2Model card, HPC System Model v0

Model ID

MDL-XT07-HPC · v0.1

Purpose

represent HPC and advanced computing as infrastructure coupled to electricity, cooling, chips, public funding, workforce and security policy

Family

graph-based system of systems

Inputs

the cited sources of this edition; no proprietary data

Method

expert-specified coupling strengths (STRONG · MODERATE · WEAK) from assessments and analogue events

Validation

none yet, first validation against federation evidence in 2027

Uncertainty

qualitative; strengths are hypotheses, not measurements

Domain of validity

global scale; not for asset-, site- or country-level use

Reproducibility

strength table and sources published in this edition

A.3The baseline evidence cut

Every Nexus edition is published from a frozen evidence cut. The global baseline cut is documentary: it pins the exact edition of every source cited. Federation cuts begin with the first national Foundry cuts in 2027.

Cut ID

DC-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-B0

Type

baseline documentary cut

Resolution policy

pinned · as of 30 September 2026

Sources pinned

43 cited sources, each at the edition and access date in the references

Model runs

none at baseline, analytical values are stated with their method

Digest

computed at freeze and recorded in the publication record

Supersedes

nothing, first cut of the series

Superseded by

the 2027 HPC annual cut

Lineage

1. 01

   source edition

2. 02

   pinned citation

3. 03

   finding

4. 04

   page

5. 05

   publication record

A.4Evidence age and coverage

A 2026 global edition rests on evidence observed in many different years. This page shows each time base, so that no single year label hides older evidence.

A.5Evidence cards, two anchor sources

Evidence cards to follow in 2027

• TOP500⁶: the November 2026 list
• IEA²⁸: report text on data centre demand
• EUR-Lex³⁴³⁵: delegated regulations from the primary text
• Argonne and Oak Ridge³¹⁸: system specifications

A.6Publication acceptance record

Editorial self-check at evidence close. Every applicable item carries a disposition; the remaining items are review, approval and deposit.

A.7Status words

A.8How the edition is made, released and corrected

Every edition is built from a sealed evidence cut, reviewed under three keys, signed and deposited before any site shows it as published; corrections go to Nexus Standards as change proposals and feed the next cut.

A teaching model of the process, not a forecast and not a record of any run; dates and counts on this page come from the programme record. Sources: Reports governance at GCRI Canada (2026); Zenodo, repository of record for Reports deposits (2026).

Lifecycle, one state at a time: Draft, Computed, Evidence bound, Reviewed, Approved for release, Published, Corrected, Superseded. This edition is a draft.

A.9Glossary and abbreviations

A.10Technical annex

A.1 · indicator definition: Linpack result (Rmax)

Construct

sustained speed of a dense linear solve at the largest size the system can run

Unit

floating-point operations per second, shown here in exaflops

Method

the Linpack benchmark run by the submitter and reported to the list

Source

TOP500 list, June 2026¹

Uncertainty

reported by submitters; not independently repeated here

Known limits

one benchmark; dense algebra only; not a measure of useful scientific output

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 29UNVERIFIED, not opened: Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, December 2024; figures taken from a DOE news item [12]; the report pages returned an access error. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 9EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), JUPITER launching Europe’s exascale era (news item, 5 September 2025; about 24,000 GH200 superchips; warm-water cooling; funding shares; power and budget not stated). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 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
6. 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
7. 31UNVERIFIED, not opened: Argonne National Laboratory (ed.), Genesis Mission systems (Solstice and Equinox; reported plans of 100,000 and 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, vendor-stated AI performance figures), taken from search-result summaries that disagree on dates; the page returned an access error. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 8Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (ed.), compute systems (index page; Lux and Discovery labelled as introduced; no specifications). Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 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
10. 32UNVERIFIED, not opened: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (ed.), El Capitan verified as world’s fastest supercomputer (news item, November 2024), not retrieved; list values only. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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
14. 42UNVERIFIED, not opened: Uptime Institute (ed.), Global Data Center Survey 2025, not retrieved; the page returned an access error; no figure used. Uptime Institute, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 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
16. 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
17. 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

B.1The indicator set

B.2Global source register

The governed source set behind this edition. Each source keeps its authority, coverage, cadence and role; categories describe origin, not truth.

Domains bound by the register

• INF
• ENE
• FIN
• TRD
• AIC
• MIN
• CLI
• WAT
• DAT
• HLT

B.3Regional reading, HPC across ten clusters

Regional plates follow with the regional editions. This page gives the regional reading of HPC infrastructure in table form and ranks no region.

B.4Cluster card: exascale systems on the June 2026 list

• systems
• power
• efficiency
• public lists

Systems in view

LineShine, El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora, JUPITER Booster

Defining events

LineShine entry at first place; JUPITER inauguration¹⁹

Couplings

ENE → INF facility power; TRD → INF licence rules

Capability evidence

warm-water cooling and heat reuse at one system⁹

Gaps

cooling water; newest system power from primary pages; supply

Agenda items

H-01 · H-04

B.5How countries appear in the HPC edition

Countries enter the HPC edition through the readiness chapters of their own national editions, on one card grammar. They are read against peer distributions and thresholds, never ranked.

Editions in the 2026 Baseline programme

How to read a country card

• Each system is shown against the distribution of its peers, with thresholds where they exist
• Couplings and risk objects come from the country’s own national edition
• Capability rungs record evidence, not a judgement of institutions
• Evidence age is printed, so older national data are visible as such

B.6Licences

B.7Formats and provenance

Provenance

Edition pack

The edition’s content pack (JSON), from which the print and web editions are built

Evidence cut

DC-XTECH-HPC-GLOBAL-2026-B0, closed 30 September 2026

Reproducibility

sourced values cited; analytical values reproducible from stated parameters

Self-check

14 of 23 at evidence close; a fail on any item blocks release

Review

five passes scheduled before release (in Annex C)

Publisher of record

GCRI for the Nexus Consortium

Corrections

Registry correction pathway; upheld corrections are published as notices with a new version

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 9EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), JUPITER launching Europe’s exascale era (news item, 5 September 2025; about 24,000 GH200 superchips; warm-water cooling; funding shares; power and budget not stated). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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

C.143 sources

NR-CIT-1, editor first. A DOI is linked where the source has one; Nexus records carry a UNI once the catalogue allocates it (NS-1).

1. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
2. 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. Cited in chapter 2, chapter 6
3. 3TOP500 (ed.), Green500 list, June 2026 (list page; top five by gigaflops per watt). TOP500 project, Hamburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
4. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8
5. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
6. 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. Cited in chapter 6
7. 7Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (ed.), Frontier (system page; 1.6 exaflops peak; 74 cabinets; delivered 2021; the page value differs from the peak on the list page). Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 8
8. 8Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (ed.), compute systems (index page; Lux and Discovery labelled as introduced; no specifications). Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 8
9. 9EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (ed.), JUPITER launching Europe’s exascale era (news item, 5 September 2025; about 24,000 GH200 superchips; warm-water cooling; funding shares; power and budget not stated). EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 8
10. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 2, chapter 6
11. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
12. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8
13. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8
14. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 2, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
15. 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. Cited in chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
16. 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. Cited in chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
17. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
18. 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. Cited in chapter 6
19. 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. Cited in chapter 6
20. 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. Cited in chapter 6
21. 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. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6
22. 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. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
23. 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. Cited in chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
24. 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. Cited in chapter 6, chapter 8
25. 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. Cited in chapter 6, chapter 8
26. 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. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
27. 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. Cited in chapter 6, chapter 8
28. 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. Cited in chapter 2, chapter 6
29. 29UNVERIFIED, not opened: Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, December 2024; figures taken from a DOE news item [12]; the report pages returned an access error. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 2
30. 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. Cited in the summary, chapter 2, chapter 4, chapter 6
31. 31UNVERIFIED, not opened: Argonne National Laboratory (ed.), Genesis Mission systems (Solstice and Equinox; reported plans of 100,000 and 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, vendor-stated AI performance figures), taken from search-result summaries that disagree on dates; the page returned an access error. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 8
32. 32UNVERIFIED, not opened: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (ed.), El Capitan verified as world’s fastest supercomputer (news item, November 2024), not retrieved; list values only. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.
33. 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. Cited in chapter 2, chapter 6, chapter 8
34. 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. Cited in chapter 1, chapter 6, chapter 8
35. 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. Cited in chapter 6, chapter 8
36. 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. Cited in chapter 6
37. 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. Cited in chapter 6
38. 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. Cited in chapter 6
39. 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. Cited in chapter 6
40. 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. Cited in chapter 6
41. 41UNVERIFIED, not opened: DatacenterDynamics and The Next Platform (eds.), reports on FugakuNEXT (development budget above 110 billion yen, FP64 peak goal above 2.6 exaflops), taken from search-result summaries. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 2
42. 42UNVERIFIED, not opened: Uptime Institute (ed.), Global Data Center Survey 2025, not retrieved; the page returned an access error; no figure used. Uptime Institute, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.
43. 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. Cited in chapter 2, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8

C.2Publication record

Colophon

Format

A4 portrait · screen, print and archival PDF

Typefaces

Space Grotesk (display) · Geist (text) · IBM Plex Sans Italic (standfirsts) · IBM Plex Mono (data)

Design standard

Reports Foundational Edition, Volume I, Part VII

Accessibility

tagged PDF and HTML targets; text alternatives for every figure

Production

Reports editorial team, GCRI

Release path for this version