United Kingdom · operational · ai training

Dawn

Operated by University of Cambridge at University of Cambridge (CSD3) .

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: 19.46 PFlop/s
Rpeak: 53.85 PFlop/s
Rmax ÷ Rpeak: 36.1%
Cores: 156,864
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	- Dell PowerEdge XE9640	Dell Technologies DELLNYSE	-	Reported	hpc.cam.ac.uk docs.hpc.cam.ac.uk
Accelerator	Intel Data Center GPU Max 1550 Accelerators oneAPI (Xe-HPC) · Intel 7 / TSMC N5 · 600 W four Intel Data Center GPU Max 1550 per node, 256 nodes	Intel INTCNASDAQ	1,024 estimated	Reported	docs.hpc.cam.ac.uk
CPU	Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 CPUs x86-64 · 48C · 2.1 GHz · Intel 7 · 350 W two Xeon Platinum 8468 per node, 256 nodes	Intel INTCNASDAQ	512 estimated	Reported	docs.hpc.cam.ac.uk
Interconnect	NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR Interconnect Fat tree or dragonfly+ · 200 Gb/s per port · About 0.6 microseconds quad-rail NVIDIA Mellanox HDR200 InfiniBand	NVIDIA NVDANASDAQ	-	Reported	docs.hpc.cam.ac.uk

AI datacenter metrics

Figures beyond an accelerator count, each with who stated it. What can and cannot be compared across AI datacenters.

Metric	Value	As of	Basis	Note	Source
Accelerators	1,024 accelerators	2024-01	Operator stated	Intel Data Center GPU Max 1550 count from the Dell/Intel-sourced CIO article; Cambridge says 'more than a thousand'. Phase 1 only.	cio.com cam.ac.uk

The read

Cambridge's UK AI Research Resource system: 256 Dell PowerEdge XE9640 nodes, each with two Xeon Platinum 8468 CPUs and four Intel Data Center GPU Max 1550, on quad-rail HDR InfiniBand. Early access began in January 2024 and it ranked 40th in November 2023. Cambridge's own documentation is the only source for the hardware, and the GPU and CPU counts are our arithmetic from its node counts, so those quantities are marked estimated. TOP500 is the only source for Rmax, Rpeak and core count, so the tier is reported.

Timeline

2023-11 List debut at #40 (November 2023) source
2024-01 First operational source

Public list appearances

Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.

#40: TOP500, November 2023 →

Site & facility

University of Cambridge (CSD3)

Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom
Commissioned: 2024

docs.hpc.cam.ac.uk

Change history

2026-10-04 Added AI datacenter metrics for dawn
2026-09-20 Added with a rank pointer on the edition where it ranked highest

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.hpc.cam.ac.uk	names system, part and count	Intel Data Center GPU Max 1550, Intel Xeon Platinum 8468, NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR · counts: 1024
top500.org	names system and part	Intel Data Center GPU Max 1550, Intel Xeon Platinum 8468, NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR

Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.