Supercomputers/Systems/HLRS NEC SX-8
Germany · decommissioned · hpc
HLRS NEC SX-8
Also known as SX-8/576M72
Operated by HLRS at HLRS, University of Stuttgart .
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
- 8.92 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 9.22 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 96.7%
- Cores
- 576
- 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 | - NEC SX-8 cluster of 72 nodes | NEC | - | Verified | top500.orgfs.hlrs.de |
| CPU | - NEC SX-8 vector processors, 2 GHz, 8 per node | NEC | 576 reported | Verified | top500.orgfs.hlrs.de |
| Interconnect | - Multi-stage crossbar | NEC | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | NEC SUPER-UX Operating systems Unix (NEC SX-proprietary) · Proprietary Super-UX | NEC | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The NEC SX-8 vector cluster at the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart. A paper by HLRS and NASA authors says HLRS installed 72 SX-8 nodes with 576 processors, each node with 128 GB of memory, fronted by a 16-processor Itanium 2 TX-7 and sharing file systems with it. TOP500 lists 576 cores at 2 GHz on a multi-stage crossbar under Super-UX, 8.92 TFlop/s Rmax and 9.22 TFlop/s peak, 27th on the June 2005 list and listed until November 2007. 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
HLRS, University of Stuttgart
- Location
- Stuttgart, Germany
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling
- Commissioned
- 1996
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added HLRS's NEC SX-8 cluster, 27th on the June 2005 TOP500
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 |
|---|---|---|
| fs.hlrs.de | does not name this system | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | NEC SUPER-UX |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
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.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.