DWD SX-Aurora (2020)

Also known as DWD NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA A412-8

Operated by Deutscher Wetterdienst at DWD Computing Centre (Offenbach) .

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: 2.60 PFlop/s
Rpeak: 4.36 PFlop/s
Rmax ÷ Rpeak: 59.6%
Cores: 14,848
Power: 456.62 kW
Per watt: 5.7 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-Aurora TSUBASA A412-8	NEC 6701TSE	-	Reported	top500.org
Accelerator	NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA Vector Engine Accelerators NEC vector · 8C · 1.6 GHz · 16 nm · 300 W NEC Vector Engine Type10AE 8C 1.58 GHz (8 vector engines per node, count not stated for this entry)	NEC 6701TSE	-	Reported	top500.org
CPU	- AMD Rome 24-core 2.8 GHz vector host per node	AMD AMDNASDAQ	-	Reported	hpcuserforum.com
Interconnect	NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR Interconnect Fat tree or dragonfly+ · 200 Gb/s per port · About 0.6 microseconds InfiniBand HDR100	NVIDIA NVDANASDAQ	-	Reported	top500.org

The read

First TOP500 entry of the German Weather Service's NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA vector supercomputer, an A412-8 with Vector Engine Type10AE 8C 1.58 GHz on InfiniBand HDR100, listed at 14,848 cores, 2.60 PFlop/s Rmax, 4.36 PFlop/s Rpeak and 457 kW, ranked 140 in November 2020. DWD's own HPC User Forum slides describe the procurement (won by NEC in 2019) as phased: nodes of an AMD Rome 24-core vector host with 8 SX-Aurora vector engines, a research cluster of 14,848 vector cores at the first phase and 18,688 at the next, with the research system placed away from Offenbach (Ludwigshafen) for disaster backup. The later procurement phases (the slides quote a total upgrade factor of 6.0 by phase 2) and a new 2025 system make this early configuration superseded, so the status is upgraded. A 2021 phase-1 listing of the same cluster family is not recorded separately here.

Timeline

2019 Announced source
2020 First operational source
2020-11 List debut at #140 (November 2020) source

Public list appearances

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

#140: TOP500, November 2020 →

Site & facility

DWD Computing Centre (Offenbach)

Location: Offenbach, Germany

top500.org hpcuserforum.com

Change history

2026-10-02 Added DWD SX-Aurora (2020)

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
hpcuserforum.com	does not name this system	-
top500.org	names system and part	NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA Vector Engine, NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR

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