Supercomputers/Systems/Big Red II
USA · decommissioned · hpc
Big Red II
Also known as Indiana University Big Red II
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
- 597.40 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 1.00 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 59.7%
- Cores
- 31,288
- Power
- 458.12 kW
- Per watt
- 1.3 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 | - Cray XK7 | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.orgdatacenterknowledge.com |
| Accelerator | - NVIDIA Kepler (Tesla K20) GPUs, one per XK node, 676 XK nodes | NVIDIA | 676 reported | Reported | top500.orgdatacenterknowledge.com |
| CPU | AMD Opteron 6276 (Interlagos) CPUs x86-64 · 16C · 2.3 GHz · 32 nm · 115 W Opteron 6276 16C 2.3 GHz | AMD | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | Cray Gemini Interconnect 3D torus · About 6 GB/s per direction per link · Around 1 microsecond Cray Gemini interconnect | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Indiana University's Cray XK7, replacing the original Big Red and billed as the fastest university-owned supercomputer in the United States at its 2013 dedication. IU's described layout is 676 XK nodes (one AMD Interlagos CPU and one NVIDIA Kepler GPU) plus 344 XE nodes, about one petaflop peak on the Gemini interconnect. TOP500 lists 31,288 cores and 597.4 TFlop/s Rmax, 47th on the June 2013 list.
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 II, Indiana University's Cray XK7
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 |
|---|---|---|
| datacenterknowledge.com | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | AMD Opteron 6276 (Interlagos), Cray Gemini |
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.