Supercomputers/Systems/Edinburgh Cray T3E900
United Kingdom · operational · hpc
Edinburgh Cray T3E900
Operated by EPCC .
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: 1263 of 1345 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 56 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
- 218.0 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 313.2 GFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 69.6%
- Cores
- 348
- 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 | - Cray T3E massively parallel system | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | - DEC Alpha EV5 450 MHz, 348 processing elements | Digital Equipment Corporation HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | - Cray T3E 3-D torus interconnect | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | - UNICOS (UNICOS/mk on T3E nodes) | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The University of Edinburgh's Cray T3E900, the successor to its T3D at EPCC, at 218 GFlop/s Rmax and 313.2 GFlop/s Rpeak. TOP500 lists the Cray T3E with 348 processors (EV5 450 MHz, 3-D torus, UNICOS), TOP500 installation year 1997, ranked 26th in November 1998, then 39th, 49th, 67th, 89th, 109th, 138th, 248th and 338th in November 2002 (its last list). The record is sourced from TOP500 alone.
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 Edinburgh Cray T3E900
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 | - |
Checked 2026-10-13 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.