Supercomputers/Systems/Cori
USA · decommissioned · hpc
Cori
Operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at NERSC, Shyh Wang Hall .
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: 32 of 52 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 4 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
- 14.02 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 27.88 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 50.3%
- Cores
- 622,336
- Power
- 3.94 MW
- Per watt
- 3.6 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 | - Cray XC40 | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | docs.nersc.govnersc.gov |
| Accelerator | Intel Xeon Phi 7250 (Knights Landing) Accelerators Intel Xeon Phi 7250 68C 1.4GHz | Intel | - | Reported | docs.nersc.govnersc.gov |
| Interconnect | Cray Aries Interconnect Aries interconnect | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | docs.nersc.govnersc.gov |
| Storage | Lustre Storage Lustre | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | docs.nersc.govnersc.gov |
| Cooling | Liquid-assisted air (in-cabinet coil) Cooling Cray XC40 cabinet: transverse air across in-cabinet water coils | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | docs.nersc.govnersc.gov |
| Operating system | Cray Linux Environment Operating systems Cray Linux Environment | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | docs.nersc.govnersc.gov |
The read
One of the largest Xeon Phi deployments ever built, and a useful marker for how quickly that line disappeared: Intel discontinued Knights Landing in 2018, two years after Cori entered service. The installed base it represented left the graph within a single refresh cycle.
Timeline
- 2014 Announced source
- 2016-11 List debut at #5 (November 2016) source
- 2016-11 First operational source
- 2023 Decommissioned source
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Site & facility
NERSC, Shyh Wang Hall
- Location
- Berkeley, CA, USA
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling with cooling towers
- Commissioned
- 2015
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.nersc.gov | names system and part | Cray Aries, Lustre |
| nersc.gov | does not name this system | - |
Checked 2026-09-08 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
Inside a node
Why accelerators exist, what the memory hierarchy costs, and how the CPU and accelerator merged onto one package.
Power and cooling
Why air ran out at 20 kW a rack, how warm-water cooling removes the chillers, and what PUE conceals.
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.