Supercomputers/Systems/Palmetto2 (Clemson)
USA · operational · mixed
Palmetto2 (Clemson)
Also known as Palmetto 2 cluster
Operated by Clemson University .
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
- 3.01 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 4.58 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 65.7%
- Cores
- 54,540
- 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 | - Dell PowerEdge nodes (per TOP500) | Dell Technologies | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Accelerator | - NVIDIA A100 GPUs per TOP500; Clemson documents 1,615 GPUs in total | NVIDIA | - | Reported | docs.rcd.clemson.edutop500.org |
| Interconnect | - InfiniBand at 56, 100, 200 and 400 Gbps (TOP500: HDR100) | NVIDIA | - | Reported | docs.rcd.clemson.edutop500.org |
| Operating system | Rocky Linux Operating systems RHEL-compatible Linux, community-maintained · Downstream rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux source Rocky Linux 8.6 | Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Clemson's campus Palmetto cluster as documented on 16 July 2026: 1,206 compute nodes with 54,540 CPU cores, 351,745 GB of RAM and 1,615 GPUs on 56 to 400 Gbps InfiniBand, benchmarked at 3.0 PFlops. TOP500 lists Palmetto2 with 52,080 cores (Dell, Xeon Gold 6148 with A100 GPUs, HDR100) at 3.01 PFlop/s Rmax and 4.58 Rpeak, 275th in November 2023 and 446th in June 2026; earlier Palmetto generations date back to 2013 on the list. The core count here is Clemson's current figure while the HPL numbers are the TOP500 ones for the 2023 configuration.
Timeline
- 2023-11 List debut at #275 (November 2023) source
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added Palmetto2, Clemson's campus cluster, 275th on the November 2023 TOP500
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 |
|---|---|---|
| docs.rcd.clemson.edu | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | Rocky Linux |
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
Why accelerators exist, what the memory hierarchy costs, and how the CPU and accelerator merged onto one package.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.