MPI/IPP Garching IBM p690

Also known as RZG IBM p690 cluster

Operated by MPCDF .

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: 2.73 TFlop/s
Rpeak: 5.32 TFlop/s
Rmax ÷ Rpeak: 51.4%
Cores: 1,024
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	- IBM eServer pSeries 690 Turbo 1.3 GHz	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org mpcdf.mpg.de
CPU	- IBM POWER4 1.3 GHz dual-core, 1,024 cores	IBM IBMNYSE	1,024 reported	Reported	top500.org
Interconnect	- IBM Colony switch (TOP500) / HPS Federation switch (MPCDF)	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org mpcdf.mpg.de
Operating system	IBM AIX Operating systems Unix (System V-derived) · Proprietary IBM AIX	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org

The read

IBM POWER4 (pSeries 690, 1.3 GHz) system of the Max Planck Society's Garching computing centre, successor of the Cray T3E (mpi-ipp-garching-t3e). MPCDF's history page records the IBM Power4-based system with initial shipments in October 2001, upgraded to 3.8 TFlop/s in 2002 and 5.2 TFlop/s in 2003 and equipped with the HPS 'Federation Switch', whereas TOP500 labels the interconnect Colony for these entries. TOP500 tracks the growth as separate records: 208 cores in June 2002 (rank 82, https://www.top500.org/system/170340/), 752 in November 2002 (rank 21, Rmax 2,010 GFlop/s, https://www.top500.org/system/170317/), 768 in June 2003 (rank 24, https://www.top500.org/system/170319/), 822 in November 2003 (rank 31, https://www.top500.org/system/173113/) and 1,024 cores in November 2004 (AIX, Rmax 2,735 and Rpeak 5,324.8 GFlop/s, rank 75), the configuration recorded here (https://www.top500.org/system/174173/). MPCDF's own peak figures (3.8 and 5.2 TFlop/s) sit slightly below TOP500's Rpeak for the 752 and 1,024-core steps. Later MPCDF machines (Power5 p575, Blue Gene/P, Power6 'vip') are described on the same history page.

Timeline

2001-10 First operational source
2004-11 List debut at #75 (November 2004) source

Public list appearances

Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.

#75: TOP500, November 2004 →

Change history

2026-10-17 Added MPI/IPP Garching IBM p690

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
mpcdf.mpg.de	names system only	-
top500.org	names system only	-

Checked 2026-10-18 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.

MPI/IPP Garching IBM p690

Measured performance

What this machine is made of

The read

Timeline

Public list appearances

Change history

Source check

Further reading

Operating a supercomputer

Inside a node

The interconnect