Supercomputers/Systems/Blue Waters
USA · decommissioned · hpc
Blue Waters
Operated by NCSA at NCSA National Petascale Computing Facility .
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: 32 of 52 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 4 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
- -
- Rpeak
- 13.34 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- -
- Cores
- -
- 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 XE6/XK7 | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | ncsa.illinois.edu |
| Accelerator | NVIDIA Tesla K20X Accelerators NVIDIA K20x | NVIDIA | - | Reported | ncsa.illinois.edu |
| CPU | AMD Opteron 6276 (Interlagos) CPUs AMD Opteron 6276 16C 2.3GHz | AMD | - | Reported | ncsa.illinois.edu |
| Interconnect | Cray Gemini Interconnect Cray Gemini interconnect | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | ncsa.illinois.edu |
| Storage | Lustre Storage Lustre | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | ncsa.illinois.edu |
| Cooling | Liquid-assisted air (in-cabinet coil) Cooling Cray XE6/XK7 cabinet: liquid-assisted air | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | ncsa.illinois.edu |
| Operating system | Cray Linux Environment Operating systems Cray Linux Environment | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | ncsa.illinois.edu |
The read
The most important system on this site that has no rank, because NCSA declined to submit an HPL result at all - a deliberate position that benchmark performance did not represent the science workload. It was among the largest systems in the world for years and appears on no public ranking. Only the vendor peak figure is recorded here; we publish no estimated Rmax for it, because estimating one would be exactly the error the ranking's absence invites.
Site & facility
NCSA National Petascale Computing Facility
- Location
- Urbana, IL, USA
- Cooling
- Chilled water
- Commissioned
- 2010
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 |
|---|---|---|
| ncsa.illinois.edu | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-09-08 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.
Power and cooling
Why air ran out at 20 kW a rack, how warm-water cooling removes the chillers, and what PUE conceals.
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.