Supercomputers/Systems/Ascend (OSC)
USA · operational · mixed
Ascend (OSC)
Also known as Ohio Supercomputer Center Ascend
Operated by Ohio Supercomputer 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
- -
- Rpeak
- 2.00 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- -
- Cores
- -
- 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 Technologies PowerEdge servers (24 compute nodes) | Dell Technologies | - | Reported | osc.edu |
| Accelerator | - 96 NVIDIA A100 80GB Tensor Core GPUs with NVLink | NVIDIA | 96 reported | Reported | osc.edu |
| CPU | - 48 AMD EPYC CPUs | AMD | - | Reported | osc.edu |
| Interconnect | NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR Interconnect Fat tree or dragonfly+ · 200 Gb/s per port · About 0.6 microseconds NVIDIA Quantum 200Gb/s InfiniBand | NVIDIA | - | Reported | osc.edu |
AI datacenter metrics
Figures beyond an accelerator count, each with who stated it. What can and cannot be compared across AI datacenters.
| Metric | Value | As of | Basis | Note | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accelerators | 96 accelerators | 2023-01 | Operator stated | 96 NVIDIA A100 80GB GPUs at launch per OSC's January 2023 release. | osc.edu |
The read
The Ohio Supercomputer Center's first dedicated GPU cluster, launched on 19 January 2023 for AI, data analytics and machine learning after testing from late October to mid-December 2022. OSC's release describes Dell PowerEdge servers (24 compute nodes) with 48 AMD EPYC CPUs and 96 NVIDIA A100 80 GB GPUs linked by NVLink and NVIDIA Quantum 200 Gb/s InfiniBand, adding 2 PFlop/s of theoretical peak performance. The release is from launch, so later expansions are not captured.
Timeline
- 2023-01 First operational source
Change history
- 2026-10-07 Added Ascend (OSC)
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 |
|---|---|---|
| osc.edu | names system and part | NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.
Inside a node
Why accelerators exist, what the memory hierarchy costs, and how the CPU and accelerator merged onto one package.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.