This work presents an active vibration control scheme in high-speed turbocharger rotor system. The working speed of these rotors is very high so a small vibration may damage the system, so there is a requirement to control such unwanted vibrations. Most of the cases these rotors are supported on the floating ring bearings. Initially, the rotor model is developed with finite element method to get the dynamic response of the system due to unbalance and gravity forces. The nonlinear hydrodynamic bearing forces are computed and the equations of motion of multi-degree of freedom turbocharger model are solved with time integration scheme. After obtaining the parametric effects of the bearing on overall system response an electromagnetic actuator system is adopted to control the vibration amplitudes in the system. The methodology is found to be reliable and reduces the vibration amplitudes considerably. © 2020, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.