Supercomputers/Systems/Avoca
Australia · decommissioned · hpc
Avoca
Also known as VLSCI Blue Gene/Q
Operated by VLSCI .
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
- 715.55 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 838.86 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 85.3%
- Cores
- 65,536
- Power
- 328.75 kW
- Per watt
- 2.2 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 Blue Gene/Q, four racks, 4,096 compute nodes | IBM | - | Reported | top500.orgtheregister.com |
| CPU | IBM PowerPC A2 (Power BQC) CPUs PowerPC A2 · 18C · 1.6 GHz · 45 nm · 55 W Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz | IBM | - | Reported | top500.orgtheregister.com |
| Interconnect | IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus Interconnect 5D torus · 2 GB/s per link per direction Blue Gene/Q custom 5D torus | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Four-rack IBM Blue Gene/Q at the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative: 65,536 PowerPC A2 cores, 65 TB of RAM and a 5D torus network, aimed at life sciences work such as cell simulation, drug interaction modelling and genome analysis. The Register reports installation starting 4 June 2012, a 695 TFLOPS Linpack run at acceptance on 18 June 2012 (tied 29th on the June 2012 list), and calls it Australia's fastest supercomputer at the time. TOP500 later carries 715.55 TFLOPS Rmax and 328.75 kW, and the system sat 101st in June 2015. No retirement date appears in the pages we cited, so the status date is the data refresh.
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 Avoca, the VLSCI Blue Gene/Q
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 and part | IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus |
| theregister.com | names system and part | IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus |
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
Latency-optimised versus throughput-optimised processors, NUMA, and the end of the host-to-device copy.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.