Supercomputers/Systems/Cheyenne
USA · decommissioned · hpc
Cheyenne
Operated by NCAR at NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center .
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
- 4.79 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 5.33 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 89.8%
- Cores
- 144,900
- Power
- 1.73 MW
- Per watt
- 2.8 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 | - SGI ICE XA | SGI HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand EDR Interconnect Fat tree · 100 Gb/s per 4x port · About 0.9 microseconds InfiniBand EDR | NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Operating systems Linux distribution · Open source, commercial support subscription SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1 | SUSE | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
NCAR's SGI ICE XA at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center, 21st on the November 2016 TOP500. Wikipedia says the machine was listed for government auction in April 2024, which is why it is recorded as retired; that is the only source for retirement, so no date is recorded. The TOP500 entry is the only source for the figures and no independent source confirms them, so the tier is reported. Only the parts a fetched source names are recorded as edges.
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
NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center
- Location
- Cheyenne, WY, USA
- Commissioned
- 2016
Change history
- 2026-09-22 Gained a Green500 rank pointer (#198 on the 2025-06 list)
- 2026-09-20 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 |
|---|---|---|
| en.wikipedia.org | names system and part | Mellanox InfiniBand EDR, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server |
| top500.org | names system and part | Mellanox InfiniBand EDR, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server |
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.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.