Supercomputers/Systems/Graham
Canada · decommissioned · hpc
Graham
Also known as Compute Canada Graham
Operated by SHARCNET .
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
- 1.23 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 2.64 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 46.5%
- Cores
- 51,200
- Power
- 546 kW
- Per watt
- 2.2 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 | - Huawei X6800 V3 | Huawei | - | Reported | top500.orgcs.uwaterloo.ca |
| Accelerator | NVIDIA Tesla P100 Accelerators CUDA (Pascal GP100) · 3,584C · 1.48 GHz · 16 nm · 300 W NVIDIA Tesla P100 | NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E5-2683 v4 CPUs x86-64 · 16C · 2.1 GHz · 14 nm · 120 W Xeon E5-2683 v4 16C 2.1GHz | Intel | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand EDR Interconnect Fat tree · 100 Gb/s per 4x port · About 0.9 microseconds InfiniBand EDR/FDR | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Huawei X6800 V3 national cluster at the University of Waterloo, led by SHARCNET with Compute Ontario and Compute Canada and unveiled on 5 May 2017: over 1,000 nodes and 33,000 CPU cores, more GPU nodes than any other Canadian academic system, 2.6 PFLOPS theoretical peak, 650 kW, 16 tonnes, a 17 million dollar CFI and Ontario investment, and rear-door liquid cooling. TOP500 lists Xeon E5-2683 v4, NVIDIA Tesla P100 and InfiniBand EDR/FDR with 51,200 cores, 1.23 PFLOPS Rmax and 546 kW; it ranked 166th in June 2018 after 96th in June 2017. The Alliance status page says Graham was retired on 15 September 2025 and replaced by Nibi (https://status.alliancecan.ca/view_incident?incident=1409).
Timeline
- 2017-05 First operational source
- 2018-06 List debut at #166 (June 2018) source
- 2025-09-15 Decommissioned 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 Graham, the Waterloo national cluster
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 |
|---|---|---|
| cs.uwaterloo.ca | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | Intel Xeon E5-2683 v4, NVIDIA Tesla P100, Mellanox InfiniBand EDR |
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.