Earth Simulator 2

Also known as ES2, SX-9/E

Operated by JAMSTEC at Earth Simulator 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: 122.40 TFlop/s
Rpeak: 131.07 TFlop/s
Rmax ÷ Rpeak: 93.4%
Cores: 1,280
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-9/E, 160 nodes	NEC 6701TSE	-	Reported	jamstec.go.jp top500.org
CPU	- NEC SX-9/E vector processor 3.2GHz	NEC 6701TSE	1,280 reported	Reported	top500.org
Interconnect	- Fat tree network	NEC 6701TSE	-	Reported	top500.org
Operating system	NEC SUPER-UX Operating systems Unix (NEC SX-proprietary) · Proprietary Super-UX	NEC 6701TSE	-	Reported	top500.org

The read

Second-generation Earth Simulator at JAMSTEC: 160 NEC SX-9/E vector nodes (1,280 processors) with 131 TFLOPS peak, in operation from March 2009. Achieved 122.4 TFLOPS on Linpack, 93.38 percent efficiency, the highest efficiency on the TOP500 at the time, and ranked 22nd on the June 2009 list. Replaced by Earth Simulator 3 in 2015.

Timeline

2009-03 First operational source
2009-06 List debut at #22 (June 2009) source
2015 Decommissioned source

Public list appearances

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

#22: TOP500, June 2009 →

Site & facility

Earth Simulator Center

Location: Yokohama, Japan
Cooling: Air cooling
Commissioned: 2002

jamstec.go.jp

Change history

2026-10-02 Added Earth Simulator 2, JAMSTEC's NEC SX-9/E system, 22nd on the June 2009 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 and part	NEC SUPER-UX
jamstec.go.jp	names system only	-

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