Supercomputers/Systems/Touchstone Delta (Caltech)
USA · operational · hpc
Touchstone Delta (Caltech)
Also known as Intel Delta; Delta 512
Operated by California Institute of Technology .
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: 1263 of 1345 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 56 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
- 13.9 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 20.5 GFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 67.9%
- Cores
- 512
- 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 | - Intel Touchstone Delta, 512 processors | Intel | - | Reported | top500.orgen.wikipedia.org |
| CPU | - Intel i860 40 MHz, 512 processors | Intel | 512 reported | Reported | top500.org |
The read
TOP500 lists the Intel Delta at Caltech as installed in 1991 with 512 Intel i860 processors at 40 MHz running OSF/1, 13.9 GFLOPS Rmax and 20.48 GFLOPS peak, eighth on the first TOP500 list in June 1993 and still listed in June 1998. Wikipedia's Intel Paragon article identifies the Touchstone Delta as the experimental system built at Caltech from which the Paragon XP/S was productized, launched in 1992. TOP500 is the only source for the performance figures, so the tier is reported. The June 1998 list is the last evidence of operation and is recorded as the status date.
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
- 2026-10-09 Added Touchstone Delta (Caltech)
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 |
|---|---|---|
| en.wikipedia.org | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-13 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.