The US has taken the first step towards exascale HPC systems with the 1,686 petaflops “Frontier” system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This year, Argonne National Laboratory is preparing for the switch to be turned on for “Aurora”. According to Rick Stevens, associate laboratory director of computing for environment and life sciences at Argonne, the next leap to zettascale or quantum computing could take another 15 to 20 years or more. AI is currently playing a major role in the development of HPC systems, with AI-enhanced applications, AI-managed simulations and surrogates, and dedicated AI accelerators.