Supercomputers/Systems/CSCS NEC SX-3/22
Switzerland · operational · hpc
CSCS NEC SX-3/22
Also known as Adula
Operated by CSCS .
Researched with AI assistance, checked by scripts. These rows were researched by AI agents reading public operator, laboratory and vendor sources, appended by scripts and checked by automated validation; no subject-matter expert has reviewed them (how this site is made). A mechanical second-reader pass has since fetched every cited source: 1350 of 1540 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 64 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
- 5.0 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 5.5 GFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 90.9%
- Cores
- 2
- 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 | - NEC SX-3 model 22 | NEC | - | Reported | top500.orgchimia.ch |
| CPU | - NEC SX-3 vector processors, 2 CPUs of 2.75 GFlop/s peak | NEC | 2 reported | Reported | chimia.chtop500.org |
| Interconnect | - Multi-stage crossbar | NEC | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | NEC SUPER-UX Operating systems Unix (NEC SX-proprietary) · Proprietary SUPER-UX | NEC | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
NEC SX-3/22 with two vector processors (343 MHz per TOP500, multi-stage crossbar, SUPER-UX) at the Swiss Scientific Computing Center CSCS in Manno, Rmax 5.0 and Rpeak 5.5 GFlop/s, rank 44 in June 1993 and rank 63 in November 1993 (https://www.top500.org/system/170800/). CHIMIA's 1991 column on the then-new centre (https://chimia.ch/chimia/article/download/1991_199/1356/12011) says the supercomputer to be installed at Manno was a Japanese NEC SX-3, in its initial configuration a model 22 with two CPUs of 2.75 GFlop/s peak each (5.5 GFlop/s, matching TOP500's Rpeak), with an upgrade planned toward 22 GFlop/s, scheduled for installation in summer 1991 for first users in September, and notes it would be among the first machines of this type exported from Japan, under the HLR-91 procurement. Wikipedia's CSCS machine table names this SX-3 'Adula' (2 CPUs, 1992 to 1995), while TOP500 gives 1991 as installation year; the start date is left blank because the sources disagree. The upgrade appears in TOP500 as an SX-3/24R at CSCS from June 1994 (https://www.top500.org/system/170806/, rank 52, 11.6 GFlop/s), not modelled separately; the successor SX-4 is outside this record. Wikipedia's table gives 1995 as the end of its service; TOP500 shows it only in the two 1993 lists.
Timeline
- 1993-11 List debut at #63 (November 1993) 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
- 2026-10-18 Added CSCS NEC SX-3/22 (cscs)
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.