Supercomputers/Systems/Harvard Odyssey
USA · operational · hpc
Harvard Odyssey
Also known as Odyssey (original 2008 cluster); Harvard FAS Odyssey
Operated by Harvard FAS Research Computing at Markley Boston (1 Summer Street) .
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
- 32.41 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 38.18 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 84.9%
- Cores
- 4,096
- 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 | - Dell PowerEdge M600 blade cluster | Dell Technologies | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | - Intel quad-core Xeon 2.33 GHz Harpertown, 4,096 cores | Intel | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | Red Hat Enterprise Linux Operating systems Linux distribution · Open source, commercial support subscription Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 | Red Hat | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The original 2008 Odyssey cluster at Harvard. A Harvard FAS Research Computing retrospective says it was installed in 2008 on the seventh floor of the Markley Boston data center at 1 Summer Street, with 4,096 Intel Harpertown cores built with support from Dell, ranked 61st on the TOP500 and funded half by Lars Hernquist's group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and half by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. TOP500 lists a Dell PowerEdge M600 cluster on InfiniBand running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 at 32.41 TFlop/s Rmax and 38.18 TFlop/s Rpeak; it was 61st in June 2008, then 81st, 136th and 184th in November 2009, and last appeared in November 2010 at 434th. Later Odyssey generations are not covered by this entry.
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 Harvard Odyssey
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 |
|---|---|---|
| rc.fas.harvard.edu | names system only | - |
| 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.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.