Supercomputers/Systems/Pioneer-EUS
USA · operational · mixed
Pioneer-EUS
Also known as Azure ND A100 v4 cluster (East US)
Operated by Microsoft at Microsoft Azure (undisclosed US region) .
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
- 16.59 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 24.56 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 67.5%
- Cores
- 157,440
- 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 | - Microsoft Azure NDv4 cluster | Microsoft | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Accelerator | NVIDIA A100 SXM4 40GB Accelerators CUDA (Ampere GA100) · 6,912C · 1.41 GHz · 7 nm · 400 W NVIDIA A100 40GB, eight per ND96asr_v4 node | NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.orglearn.microsoft.com |
| CPU | AMD EPYC 7V12 CPUs x86-64 · 48C · 2.45 GHz · 7 nm AMD EPYC 7V12 48C 2.45GHz | AMD | - | Reported | top500.orglearn.microsoft.com |
| Interconnect | NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR Interconnect Fat tree or dragonfly+ · 200 Gb/s per port · About 0.6 microseconds Infiniband HDR, 200 Gb/s per GPU | NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.orglearn.microsoft.com |
| Operating system | Ubuntu Server Operating systems Linux distribution · Open source, free with paid support tiers Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS | Canonical | - | Reported | top500.org |
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 | 1,312 accelerators | 2021-06 | Operator stated | InfoQ: the 16.59 PFlop/s HPL result used 164 ND A100 v4 VMs; Microsoft Learn: eight A100 GPUs per VM. 164 x 8 = 1,312. Applied to each Pioneer entry because all four report identical Rmax and 157,440 cores (960 per VM); Microsoft does not break the figure out per region. | infoq.comlearn.microsoft.com |
The read
One of four same-specification Azure ND A100 v4 (NDv4) clusters that Microsoft submitted to the TOP500 as Pioneer-EUS, Pioneer-SCUS, Pioneer-WEU and Pioneer-WUS2, each measured at 16.59 PFlop/s Rmax on the same 157,440-core configuration. InfoQ's June 2021 report of the Azure ND A100 v4 launch says the 16.59 PFlop/s Linpack result came from 164 ND A100 v4 virtual machines of eight A100 GPUs each on a pre-release public cluster, and that the VMs were offered in East US, West US 2, West Europe and South Central US. The TOP500 suffix is the only link between this entry and a region, and Microsoft names no datacentre, so the site is left undisclosed. TOP500 gives 2020 as this entry's installation year (the other three say 2021) and ranked it 26 in June 2021.
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
Change history
- 2026-10-09 Added Pioneer-EUS (Microsoft Azure)
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 | NVIDIA A100 SXM4 40GB, AMD EPYC 7V12, NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR, Ubuntu Server |
| infoq.com | does not name this system | NVIDIA A100 SXM4 40GB, NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
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.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.