Supercomputers/Systems/Big Red
USA · decommissioned · hpc
Big Red
Also known as Indiana University IBM JS21 cluster
Operated by Indiana University .
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
- 15.04 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 20.48 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 73.4%
- Cores
- 2,048
- 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 | - IBM BladeCenter JS21, 512 blades | IBM | - | Verified | top500.orgscholarworks.iu.edu |
| CPU | - PowerPC 970MP 2.5 GHz dual-core, 2,048 cores | IBM | - | Reported | top500.orgscholarworks.iu.edu |
| Interconnect | - Myrinet 2000 adapters | Myricom | - | Reported | top500.orgscholarworks.iu.edu |
| Storage | - 360 TB GPFS parallel file system | IBM | - | Reported | scholarworks.iu.edu |
The read
Indiana University's IBM BladeCenter JS21 cluster, presented at SC06 as the fastest supercomputer owned by a US university and the most powerful system on the NSF TeraGrid. IU describes 512 JS21 blades with two dual-core PowerPC 970MP 2.5 GHz processors and 8 GB each, Myrinet 2000, a 360 TB GPFS file system and 20.48 teraflops peak; TOP500 agrees on 2,048 cores and 20.48 TFlop/s peak and adds 15.04 TFlop/s Rmax, 23rd on the June 2006 list and 31st on the November 2006 list used here. 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 Big Red, Indiana University's IBM JS21 cluster, 31st on the November 2006 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.
| Cited source | Result | Found on the page |
|---|---|---|
| scholarworks.iu.edu | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system only | - |
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.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.
Storage and I/O
Parallel file systems, why checkpointing dominates the write load, and the metadata failure mode nobody expects.