Supercomputers/Systems/MareNostrum 3
Spain · decommissioned · hpc
MareNostrum 3
Also known as MareNostrum (2012 iDataPlex)
Operated by Barcelona Supercomputing Center at Barcelona Supercomputing Center .
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
- 925.06 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 1.02 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 91.0%
- Cores
- 48,896
- Power
- 1.02 MW
- Per watt
- 0.9 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 iDataPlex dx360 M4 | IBM | - | Reported | top500.orgbsc.es |
| Accelerator | - Intel Xeon Phi accelerators in 42 heterogeneous nodes | Intel | 42 reported | Reported | bsc.es |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E5-2670 CPUs x86-64 · 8C · 2.6 GHz · 32 nm · 115 W Intel Sandy Bridge-EP E5-2670 8C 2.6 GHz | Intel | - | Reported | top500.orgbsc.es |
| Interconnect | - Infiniband FDR (TOP500), FDR10 (BSC) | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.orgbsc.es |
| Operating system | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Operating systems Linux distribution · Open source, commercial support subscription Linux SuSe distribution | SUSE | - | Reported | bsc.es |
The read
The third MareNostrum at Barcelona Supercomputing Center, an IBM iDataPlex dx360 M4 system agreed between the Spanish government and IBM in August 2012. BSC documents 3,056 compute nodes with two 8-core 2.6 GHz Sandy Bridge-EP E5-2670 CPUs, 115.5 TB of memory, 3 PB of disk, InfiniBand FDR10, 42 Xeon Phi nodes and 1.1 PFlop/s peak. TOP500 lists 48,896 cores and 925.1 TFlop/s Rmax, 30th on the June 2013 list, remaining listed to November 2016 before MareNostrum 4.
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
Barcelona Supercomputing Center
- Location
- Barcelona, Spain
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling
- Commissioned
- 2005
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added MareNostrum 3, BSC's iDataPlex system
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 |
|---|---|---|
| bsc.es | names system and part | Intel Xeon E5-2670, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server |
| top500.org | names system and part | Intel Xeon E5-2670 |
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.