Supercomputers/Systems/EMSL MPP2
USA · operational · hpc
EMSL MPP2
Also known as MPP2, HPCS2, Molecular Science Computing Facility MPP2
Operated by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at EMSL at PNNL (Richland) .
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
- 8.63 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 11.62 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 74.3%
- Cores
- 1,936
- 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 | - Hewlett-Packard designed and built MPP2 from rx2600 nodes | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | emsl.pnnl.govtop500.org |
| CPU | - Intel Itanium 2 1.5 GHz (Madison), 978 dual-processor HP rx2600 nodes | Intel | 1,956 reported | Reported | emsl.pnnl.govtop500.org |
| Interconnect | - Quadrics QsNetII interconnect | Quadrics | - | Reported | emsl.pnnl.govtop500.org |
The read
MPP2, the Hewlett-Packard cluster at the Molecular Science Computing Facility of EMSL at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. EMSL's 2005 Green Book describes a production cluster of 978 HP rx2600 nodes with 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 (Madison) processors, 6.8 TB of memory, 450 TB of local disk and a Quadrics QsNetII interconnect under Linux, operational since July 2003 with an 11.8 TFlop/s theoretical peak; it gives the processor count as both 1,960 and 1,956. TOP500 lists 1,936 cores, 8,633 GFlop/s Rmax and 11,616 GFlop/s Rpeak (https://www.top500.org/system/173082/), fifth on the November 2003 list and last at rank 224 in November 2007. Figures here follow TOP500 so Rmax and Rpeak are consistent; EMSL's slightly higher peak reflects its higher processor count. 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
- 2026-10-09 Added EMSL MPP2
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 |
|---|---|---|
| emsl.pnnl.gov | does not name this system | - |
| top500.org | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-09 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.