RAND Forecasting
Initiative
Archive
The RAND Forecasting Initiative has concluded. This is a permanent read-only archive. Accounts, forecasting, and comments are no longer available.

← All questions

Will the United States have the world's fastest supercomputer in June 2022?

Yes/No Opened 15 July 2021 Closed 15 July 2022 Resolved 31 May 2022 808 forecasts 197 forecasters

Related questions. Metaculus has (now closed) questions on the performance of the top supercomputer in 2022 and when the first exaFLOP supercomputer will appear.

Context. According to the Top500 list, Japan's Fugaku supercomputer has been the world's fastest supercomputer since June 2020, with a maximum performance of 442,010 TFLOP/s, or nearly half exascale. The United States has two exascale supercomputers expected to be operational in 2021 or 2022. Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Frontier supercomputer is scheduled for delivery in 2021, with full user operations in 2022. Argonne National Laboratory's Aurora was originally expected to be the first of the two but due to delays acquiring 7nm chips is now expected by some to debut in 2022.

China is also developing three exascale supercomputers expected by some to be operational in 2021-2022

In April 2021, the United States imposed export controls on four supercomputer centers in China purportedly working on exascale machines, citing national security concerns. 

Resolution details. This question resolves based on the maximum performance achieved using the LINPACK benchmark (rMax) according to the June 2022 Top500 list, which "shows the 500 most powerful commercially available computer systems known to us." The Top500 list publishes rankings in November and June every year. See here for more information about its methodology.

***

This question was suggested by Foretell pro forecaster Ryan Beck (@RyanBeck).

To suggest a change or clarification to this question, please select Request Clarification from the green gear-shaped dropdown button to the right of the question.

Outcome

Outcome Final crowd forecast Resolution
Yes 58% Happened

“Final crowd forecast” is the last aggregate crowd probability computed before the question closed – the right-hand end of the chart below, which this table is the accessible equivalent of.

Crowd forecast over time

0% 25% 50% 75% 100% Jul 2021 Dec 2021 May 2022 58% Yes
The aggregate crowd probability, one point per day, from RFI's primary aggregation method. Gaps are days with no computed aggregate. Individual forecasts are not shown.