Supercomputers/Systems/BigBen
USA · decommissioned · hpc
BigBen
Also known as PSC Cray XT3; Big Ben
Operated by PSC .
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
- 7.94 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 9.89 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 80.3%
- Cores
- 2,060
- 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 | - Cray XT3, 2,068 compute nodes, serial number 1 | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | psc.edusciencedaily.com |
| CPU | - Dual-core Opteron 285 2.6 GHz, two cores per node (TOP500 lists 2.4 GHz at first submission) | AMD | - | Reported | psc.edutop500.org |
The read
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's Cray XT3, described by PSC as the world's first XT3 when installed in 2005. PSC lists 2,068 compute nodes of dual-core 2.6 GHz Opteron 285 processors with 2 GB per node on a custom interconnect, and a 2010 decommission. A July 2005 PSC release reports the system as the first one shipped by Cray, funded by a 9.7 million dollar NSF grant awarded in September 2004. TOP500 ranks it 33rd on the June 2005 list at 7.94 TFLOPS Rmax and 9.89 peak on 2,060 cores at 2.4 GHz, the first submission and the figures used here. The decommission year is PSC's; no month is given in the page we cited.
Timeline
- 2005-06 List debut at #33 (June 2005) source
- 2005-07 First operational source
- 2010 Decommissioned source
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 BigBen, PSC's first-of-kind Cray XT3
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 only | - |
| psc.edu | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.