Supercomputers/Systems/Galileu
Brazil · operational · hpc
Galileu
Also known as NACAD Galileu; Projeto Galileu
Operated by COPPE/UFRJ at NACAD COPPE/UFRJ .
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
- 64.63 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 72.40 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 89.3%
- Cores
- 6,464
- Power
- 430 kW
- Per watt
- 0.2 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 | - Sun Microsystems Sun Blade x6048 cluster | Sun Microsystems | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | - Intel Xeon X5560 4C 2.8GHz | Intel | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand QDR Interconnect Fat tree · 40 Gb/s per 4x port InfiniBand QDR interconnect | NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Petrobras-funded Sun Blade cluster at the NACAD high-performance computing centre of COPPE/UFRJ in Rio de Janeiro, the predecessor of Lobo Carneiro. TOP500 lists a Sun Blade x6048 with Xeon X5560 4C 2.8GHz on InfiniBand QDR, 6,464 cores, Rmax 64.63 and Rpeak 72.40 TFlop/s and 430 kW, installed in 2009 and ranked 76th in November 2009 (86th in June 2010, last listed 457th in June 2012). A Planeta Universitario report on COPPE's certification gives 64.63 TFlop/s, first in Latin America and 86th in the world in June 2010, a cost of R$9.5 million financed by Petrobras special-participation funds through the ANP, and its role in the Petrobras Galileu project for pre-salt and climate research. That report does not describe the processors, so hardware details rest on TOP500. The June 2012 list is the last evidence found, so the status date is that list; the existing Lobo Carneiro row describes it as 2.5 times as capable as Galileu.
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 Galileu at COPPE/UFRJ
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 | Mellanox InfiniBand QDR |
| planetauniversitario.com | 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.