Supercomputers/Systems/Excalibur
USA · operational · hpc
Excalibur
Also known as ARL DSRC Cray XC40
Operated by ARL DSRC .
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
- 2.48 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 3.68 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 67.5%
- Cores
- 100,064
- Power
- 1.47 MW
- Per watt
- 1.7 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 | - Cray XC40 | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E5-2698 v3 CPUs x86-64 · 16C · 2.3 GHz · 22 nm · 135 W Xeon E5-2698v3 16C 2.3GHz | Intel | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | Cray Aries Interconnect Dragonfly · About 10 GB/s per direction · Around 1 microsecond Aries interconnect | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | Cray Linux Environment Operating systems Linux, Cray-customised · Proprietary layer over open-source Linux Cray Linux Environment | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The Army Research Laboratory DSRC's Cray XC40 at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, with 100,064 Xeon E5-2698v3 16-core cores on Aries; TOP500 first lists it 20th in November 2014 and still lists it in June 2025. Defense One reports the Army unveiled it in October 2015 as a 3.7 petaflop system, 'by far the center's most powerful computer', for DoD researchers across all services, and quotes the 26th place it held on the June 2015 list. TOP500 gives an installation year of 2014 and the Army ceremony was in 2015, so no first-operational date is recorded. An Army.mil feature cites about 101,000 cores and nearly 6.3 petaflops for the center's capability, which does not match TOP500's 3.68 petaflop peak, so only the TOP500 figures are used. TOP500 is the only source for Rmax, Rpeak, cores and power, so the tier is reported.
Timeline
- 2014-11 List debut at #20 (November 2014) source
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added Excalibur, the Army Research Laboratory DSRC's Cray XC40
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 |
|---|---|---|
| defenseone.com | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | Intel Xeon E5-2698 v3, Cray Aries, Cray Linux Environment |
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.