Supercomputers/Systems/Cactus
USA · operational · hpc
Cactus
Operated by GDIT at GDIT/NOAA WCOSS (Phoenix) .
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
- 10.01 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 11.80 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 84.8%
- Cores
- 327,680
- 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 | - HPE Cray EX | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Verified | top500.orgfedscoop.com |
| CPU | AMD EPYC 7742 (Rome) CPUs x86-64 · 64C · 2.25 GHz · 7 nm · 225 W AMD EPYC 7742 64C 2.25GHz | AMD | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | HPE Slingshot-10 Interconnect Dragonfly · 100 Gb/s per port HPE Slingshot-10 | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | HPE Cray Operating System Operating systems SUSE-derived Linux, container-based management · Proprietary layer over open-source Linux HPE Cray OS | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The Phoenix, Arizona half of NOAA's twin Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System (WCOSS), identical in hardware to its Manassas twin Dogwood: an HPE Cray EX of AMD EPYC 7742 processors over Slingshot-10, operated by contractor GDIT under NOAA's WCOSS contract. NOAA states the pair exists to run higher-resolution weather and climate models, including the Global Forecast System and storm surge modelling, and to assimilate more observational data; a later 20% capacity expansion is reported at 14.5 PFlop/s per machine by NOAA and trade press, not yet reflected in TOP500's benchmark. TOP500 is the only source for Rmax, Rpeak and core count, 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.
Site & facility
Change history
- 2026-09-24 Added with a rank pointer on the edition where it ranked highest
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 |
|---|---|---|
| fedscoop.com | names system and part | HPE Cray Operating System |
| top500.org | names system and part | AMD EPYC 7742 (Rome), HPE Slingshot-10, HPE Cray Operating System |
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.