Supercomputers/Systems/CHEOPS (Cologne)
Germany · operational · hpc
CHEOPS (Cologne)
Also known as Cologne High Efficient Operating Platform for Science
Operated by University of Cologne .
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
- 85.90 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 100.17 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 85.8%
- Cores
- 9,376
- 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 | - Bull bullx supernode and blade cluster (INCA and MESCA nodes) | Bull | - | Reported | top500.orgrrzk.uni-koeln.de |
| CPU | Intel Xeon X5650 CPUs x86-64 · 6C · 2.66 GHz · 32 nm · 95 W Intel Xeon X5650 6C 2.66 GHz (plus Xeon X5550 and X7560 nodes) | Intel | - | Reported | top500.orgrrzk.uni-koeln.de |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand QDR Interconnect Fat tree · 40 Gb/s per 4x port InfiniBand QDR | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.orgrrzk.uni-koeln.de |
| Storage | - IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) | IBM | - | Reported | top500.orgrrzk.uni-koeln.de |
The read
HPC cluster of the University of Cologne's Regional Computing Centre (RRZK), supplied by Bull and in production since the end of 2010. The RRZK's CHEOPS instructions (version of 19 July 2022) list InfiniBand QDR coupled INCA dual-socket nodes with Xeon X5550 and X5650 CPUs, 24 quad-socket MESCA nodes with Xeon X7560 and 512 GB of memory, and GPFS storage, and quote more than 100 TFlop/s peak and 85.9 TFlop/s Linpack. TOP500 lists it from November 2010 (90th) to November 2012 with 9,376 cores, 85.9 TFlop/s Rmax and 100.17 TFlop/s Rpeak; the RRZK document gives the November 2010 position as 89th, one place off the TOP500 page. The document is dated 2022, which is the last evidence of service.
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 CHEOPS (Cologne), listed on the TOP500 in 2010-11
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 |
|---|---|---|
| rrzk.uni-koeln.de | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | Intel Xeon X5650, Mellanox InfiniBand QDR |
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.