Supercomputers/Systems/Netuno
Brazil · operational · hpc
Netuno
Also known as Cluster Netuno NCE
Operated by NCE/UFRJ .
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
- 16.24 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 21.79 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 74.5%
- Cores
- 2,048
- Power
- 130 kW
- Per watt
- 0.1 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 | - Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers, 256 nodes | Dell Technologies | 256 reported | Reported | conexao.ufrj.brtop500.org |
| CPU | - Intel Xeon 4C 2.6GHz (listed by TOP500 as Xeon E5430 4C 2.67GHz), two per server, 2,048 cores | Intel | - | Reported | conexao.ufrj.brtop500.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand DDR Interconnect Fat tree · 20 Gb/s per 4x port · About 2 microseconds InfiniBand DDR interconnect | NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Dell cluster inaugurated on 12 May 2008 at the Electronic Computing Centre (NCE) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, funded with R$5 million from Petrobras through the ANP and two thematic research networks (applied geophysics, and oceanographic modeling and observation) and shared with fourteen other Brazilian universities. UFRJ's news item describes 256 Dell servers with two quad-core 2.6GHz Intel processors each (2,048 cores), 4 TB of RAM and 40 TB of disk; FAPESP's report gives a theoretical peak of about 21.7 TFlop/s at roughly 74 percent efficiency. TOP500 independently lists a Dell PowerEdge 1950 cluster with 2,048 cores on DDR InfiniBand, Rmax 16.24 and Rpeak 21.79 TFlop/s, 130 kW, ranked 139th in June 2008 and 306th in November 2008 (Brazilian press cites 138th). The November 2008 list is the last evidence found, so the status date is that list.
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
- 2026-10-09 Added Netuno at UFRJ NCE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| conexao.ufrj.br | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | Mellanox InfiniBand DDR |
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.