Supercomputers/Systems/DataStar
USA · decommissioned · hpc
DataStar
Also known as SDSC IBM pSeries 655/690
Operated by SDSC at San Diego Supercomputer Center .
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
- 5.22 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 10.31 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 50.7%
- Cores
- 1,680
- 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 pSeries 655/690 | IBM | - | Verified | top500.orgsdsc.edu |
| CPU | - POWER4+ 1.5 GHz p655 and 1.7 GHz p690 nodes, 1,680 cores in the June 2004 entry | IBM | - | Reported | top500.orgsdsc.edu |
| Interconnect | - IBM Federation switch | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | IBM AIX Operating systems Unix (System V-derived) · Proprietary AIX | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
SDSC's IBM pSeries 655 and 690 cluster of POWER4+ nodes on IBM's Federation switch under AIX. TOP500 ranks the June 2004 configuration 23rd with 1,680 cores, 5,223 GFlop/s Rmax and 10,310 GFlop/s peak. SDSC's September 2005 release reports an expansion by 96 p655 nodes to 2,172 Power 4+ processors and 15.6 teraflops, with 7.3 TB of memory and a 115 TB parallel file system; that larger configuration is not the entry recorded here. TOP500 is the only source for Rmax, so the tier is reported.
Timeline
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Site & facility
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added DataStar, SDSC's IBM pSeries 655/690 cluster, 23rd on the June 2004 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 |
|---|---|---|
| top500.org | names system only | - |
| sdsc.edu | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
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.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.