Supercomputers/Systems/JUQUEEN
Germany · decommissioned · hpc
JUQUEEN
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
- 4.14 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 5.03 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 82.3%
- Cores
- 393,216
- Power
- 1.97 MW
- Per watt
- 2.1 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 Blue Gene/Q | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | IBM PowerPC A2 (Power BQC) CPUs PowerPC A2 · 18C · 1.6 GHz · 45 nm · 55 W IBM Power BQC 16C 1.6GHz | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus Interconnect 5D torus · 2 GB/s per link per direction Custom Blue Gene/Q torus interconnect | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Julich's IBM Blue Gene/Q, fifth on the November 2012 TOP500 at 393,216 cores; the 458,752-core full system later ranked lower. The Next Platform confirms it was being shut down in April 2018 and Wikipedia gives May 2018, so the year is recorded. The Gauss Centre and the Helmholtz Association are named as funders by the facility's own journal article. TOP500 is the only source for Rmax, Rpeak and core count, so the tier is reported.
Timeline
- 2012 First operational source
- 2012-11 List debut at #5 (November 2012) source
- 2018 Decommissioned source
- 2018-05 Shut down after six years as the last Blue Gene/Q at JSC, replaced by JUWELS source
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
- 2026-09-20 Added with a rank pointer on the edition where it ranked highest
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 |
|---|---|---|
| en.wikipedia.org | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus |
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.