Supercomputers/Systems/Cornell SP2/512
USA · decommissioned · hpc
Cornell SP2/512
Also known as Cornell Theory Center IBM SP, SP2/512
Operated by Cornell 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
- 88.4 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 136.2 GFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 64.9%
- 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 | - IBM supplied the RS/6000 SP2 system | IBM | - | Reported | cac.cornell.edutop500.org |
| CPU | - IBM POWER2 processors, 512-processor SP2 | IBM | 512 reported | Reported | top500.orgcac.cornell.edu |
| Operating system | IBM AIX Operating systems Unix (System V-derived) · Proprietary IBM AIX operating system | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The 512-processor IBM RS/6000 POWERparallel System (SP2) of the Cornell Theory Center, the national centre at Cornell University supported by the NSF, NIH, New York State and IBM. A December 1996 Cornell release says it had been in production since 1995 and announced an upgrade to Power2 Super Chip nodes toward a quarter-teraflop aggregate peak; the centre's later SP page describes a 160-node P2SC configuration and says the SP was decommissioned at CTC in 2000. TOP500 lists 512 POWER2 processors under AIX with 136.19 GFlop/s Rpeak and 88.4 GFlop/s Rmax, entering at rank 56 in November 1994, reaching rank 6 in December 1995 (rank 8 in June 1996) and last appearing at rank 26 in June 1997 (https://www.top500.org/system/169640/). TOP500 is the only source for Rmax, so the tier is reported.
Timeline
- 1995 First operational source
- 1996-06 List debut at #8 (June 1996) source
- 2000 Decommissioned 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
- 2026-10-09 Added Cornell SP2/512
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 |
|---|---|---|
| cac.cornell.edu | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system only | - |
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.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.