Supercomputers/Systems/CyBlue
USA · operational · hpc
CyBlue
Also known as Iowa State Blue Gene/L
Operated by Iowa State 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
- 4.71 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 5.73 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 82.2%
- Cores
- 2,048
- 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 eServer Blue Gene Solution, one rack | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | IBM PowerPC 440 700MHz CPUs PowerPC · 2C · 0.7 GHz · 130 nm · 13 W IBM PowerPC 440 700 MHz dual-core, 1,024 nodes | IBM | 2,048 reported | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | IBM BlueGene 3D torus Interconnect 3D torus, plus separate collective and barrier networks · 175 MB/s per link per direction Blue Gene 3D torus | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
IBM eServer Blue Gene/L at Iowa State University, run by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and its Information Infrastructure Institute. The department's page says CyBlue went online in January 2006 with 1,024 dual-core PowerPC 440 nodes, 5.7 TFlop/s peak and an 11 TB storage array, shared with the Center for Plant Genomics and the Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics. TOP500 lists 2,048 PowerPC 440 700 MHz cores at 4.71 TFlop/s Rmax and 5.73 TFlop/s Rpeak in June 2006 (rank 99), then 141st in November 2006 and 378th in June 2007, its last appearance.
Timeline
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 CyBlue
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 |
|---|---|---|
| web.archive.org | names system and part | IBM BlueGene 3D torus |
| top500.org | names system, part and count | IBM PowerPC 440 700MHz, IBM BlueGene 3D torus · counts: 2048 |
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.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.