Supercomputers/Systems/ASC Purple
USA · decommissioned · hpc
ASC Purple
Operated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at Livermore Computing Center .
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
- 63.39 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 77.82 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 81.5%
- Cores
- 10,240
- Power
- 1.67 MW
- Per watt
- 0.0 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 | - IBM eServer pSeries, POWER5 1.9GHz, Federation | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
LLNL's IBM POWER5 system, third on the November 2005 TOP500 at 1,671 kW. Wikipedia says it was decommissioned in November 2010 and quotes different processor and power figures from TOP500's; neither is recorded, because Wikipedia is the only source and the two count differently. The TOP500 entry is the only source for the figures and no independent source confirms them, so the tier is reported. Only the parts a fetched source names are recorded as edges.
Timeline
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Site & facility
Livermore Computing Center
- Location
- Livermore, CA, USA
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling (warm water)
- Commissioned
- 1996
Change history
- 2026-09-20 Added with a rank pointer on the edition where it ranked highest
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.
| Cited source | Result | Found on the page |
|---|---|---|
| top500.org | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.