Supercomputers/Systems/HWW Stuttgart NEC SX-4/32
Germany · operational · hpc
HWW Stuttgart NEC SX-4/32
Also known as HLRS SX-4
Operated by HLRS .
Researched with AI assistance, checked by scripts. These rows were researched by AI agents reading public operator, laboratory and vendor sources, appended by scripts and checked by automated validation; no subject-matter expert has reviewed them (how this site is made). A mechanical second-reader pass has since fetched every cited source: 1350 of 1540 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 64 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
- 61.7 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 64.0 GFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 96.4%
- Cores
- 32
- 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-4/32 | NEC | - | Reported | top500.orgelib.uni-stuttgart.de |
| CPU | - NEC SX-4 vector processors, 32 CPUs, 250 MHz per TOP500 | NEC | 32 reported | Reported | top500.orgelib.uni-stuttgart.de |
| Interconnect | - Multi-stage crossbar | NEC | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
NEC SX-4 with 32 vector processors at the University of Stuttgart computer centre, run by HWW (Hoechstleistungsrechner fuer Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft Betriebsgesellschaft mbH), Rpeak 64 GFlop/s and Rmax 61.7 GFlop/s on the system page (60.6 in the 1996-97 lists, 66.53 in June 1996). TOP500 lists it from June 1996 (rank 10) to November 1998 (rank 76) (https://www.top500.org/system/170850/). A 1996 Stuttgart bulletin on the opening of the federal high-performance computing centre (inaugurated 12 September 1996) describes the first expansion stage as this 64 GFlop/s NEC vector system, installed at the university, plus a 512-processor Cray T3E of 307 GFlop/s installed at debis in Untertuerkheim, joined by a 622 Mbit/s fibre link. It says HWW was founded in June 1995 and owned 40 percent by debis Systemhaus, 25 percent each by the University of Stuttgart and the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg and 10 percent by Porsche, and that the NEC then ranked first in Europe and eleventh worldwide (TOP500 itself shows rank 10 in June and 17 in November 1996, so the bulletin's figure is a different snapshot). NEC's chairman is quoted there as describing it as a 32-processor SX-4. It is the vector-side predecessor of the later hlrs-nec-sx8 line. The exact in-service date was not available from a fetched page, so only the year is given.
Timeline
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Change history
- 2026-10-18 Added HWW Stuttgart NEC SX-4/32 (hlrs)
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.