According to the latest TOP500 rankings, announced at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (“SC25”) in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., from November 16 to 21, 2025, Shaheen III has achieved a top position among the world’s most advanced supercomputers, ranking 1st in the Middle East and 18th globally.
Based on the direct liquid-cooled HPE Cray EX system, featuring 2,800 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips, Shaheen III delivers more than three times the processing power of the CPU-based system that ranked among the world’s fastest at the time of its launch in 2023. KAUST completed the acceptance and ownership transfer of Shaheen III’s GPUs from HPE in October 2025, in full compliance with the export license conditions imposed by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).
This milestone reflects the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s growing capability to advance global scientific excellence. From early 2026, with the activation of the new GPU partition, Shaheen III will enable faculty members across KAUST to drive world-class research aligned with the Kingdom’s research, development and innovation priorities.