Supercomputers/Systems/JUBL
Germany · decommissioned · hpc
JUBL
Also known as Julich Blue Gene/L
Operated by Forschungszentrum Julich at Julich Supercomputing Centre .
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
- 37.33 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 45.88 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 81.4%
- Cores
- 16,384
- Power
- 179 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 | - IBM eServer Blue Gene Solution, eight racks | IBM | - | Reported | top500.orgfz-juelich.de |
| CPU | IBM PowerPC 440 700MHz CPUs PowerPC · 2C · 0.7 GHz · 130 nm · 13 W PowerPC 440 dual-core 700 MHz, 16,384 cores | IBM | 16,384 reported | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | IBM BlueGene 3D torus Interconnect 3D torus, plus separate collective and barrier networks · 175 MB/s per link per direction Blue Gene proprietary interconnect | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Forschungszentrum Julich's eight-rack IBM Blue Gene/L, 16,384 dual-core 700 MHz PowerPC 440 chips, installed in 2006 and the forerunner of JUGENE. A Julich Supercomputing Centre page for the December 2006 scaling workshop describes the eight-rack Blue Gene/L, and the centre's 2007 JUGENE release says JUGENE, JUMP and JUBL complement each other. TOP500 lists it eighth on the June 2006 list at 37.33 TFLOPS Rmax and 45.88 peak, drawing 179 kW. No retirement date was found, and the Rmax comes from TOP500 alone, 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
Julich Supercomputing Centre
- Location
- Julich, Germany
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling
- Commissioned
- 2004
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added JUBL, Julich's eight-rack Blue Gene/L
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, part and count | IBM PowerPC 440 700MHz · counts: 16384 |
| fz-juelich.de | 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.