Supercomputers/Systems/Abe
USA · decommissioned · hpc
Abe
Also known as NCSA Dell Intel 64 cluster
Operated by NCSA .
Phase 1 seed dataset, compiled by hand. These rows were built from public operator, laboratory and vendor sources. A mechanical second-reader pass has since fetched every cited source: 1092 of 1153 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 40 are genuinely weakly sourced. Every claim carries its source and a confidence tier. Treat anything below verified as a lead, not a citation.
Measured performance
- Rmax
- 62.68 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 89.59 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 70.0%
- Cores
- 9,600
- Power
- -
- Per watt
- - GF/W
Figures are as last publicly reported for the configuration described below, not a live measurement. Where a system was upgraded in place, the post-upgrade configuration is shown and the earlier one appears in the timeline.
What this machine is made of
One row per supplier relationship. “Supplier at build” is the company that shipped the part at the time; where that company has since been acquired, the parent it rolls up to today is shown beside it. That distinction is what makes ticker-level aggregation possible across a thirty-year dataset.
| Role | Part | Supplier at build | Quantity | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integrator | - Dell PowerEdge 1955 blades, 1,200 in the Dell description | Dell Technologies | - | Verified | top500.orgi.dell.com |
| CPU | - Intel Xeon E5345 4C 2.33 GHz, 9,600 cores | Intel | - | Reported | top500.orgi.dell.com |
| Operating system | Red Hat Enterprise Linux Operating systems Linux distribution · Open source, commercial support subscription Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (listing also names Windows Server 2008) | Red Hat | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
NCSA's Dell cluster of PowerEdge 1955 blades with quad-core Xeon E5345 2.33 GHz processors on InfiniBand, launched in 2007 as NCSA's largest resource. A Dell case study quoting NCSA describes 1,200 dual-socket quad-core blades, about 90 teraflops and 400 TB of Lustre storage, and TOP500 lists 9,600 cores and 89.59 TFlop/s peak with a listing from June 2007 to June 2012. The entry used is 14th on the November 2007 list at 62.68 TFlop/s Rmax; the system page later shows 68.48 TFlop/s. No site is linked because the pages do not name the building. TOP500 is the only source for Rmax, so the tier is reported.
Timeline
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added Abe, NCSA's Dell PowerEdge 1955 cluster, 14th on the November 2007 TOP500
Source check
We fetched this system's own citations and recorded whether each page actually mentions it. This is a corroboration signal, not a fact check, and it is published so you can see how well the sourcing holds up rather than take it on trust.
Every source cited on this page was readable, and none of them mentions this system. They are cited at page granularity, normally because no stable deep link could be found. That is a real weakness in this row and it is why the system carries a confidence tier below verified. See how this check works.
| Cited source | Result | Found on the page |
|---|---|---|
| i.dell.com | does not name this system | - |
| top500.org | does not name this system | - |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
Inside a node
Latency-optimised versus throughput-optimised processors, NUMA, and the end of the host-to-device copy.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.