Supercomputers/Systems/Plasma Simulator SR16000
Japan · decommissioned · hpc
Plasma Simulator SR16000
Also known as NIFS Plasma Simulator (4th generation); Hitachi SR16000 L2 then M1
Operated by NIFS .
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: 1263 of 1345 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 56 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
- 253.00 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 316.21 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 80.0%
- Cores
- 10,304
- Power
- 708.2 kW
- Per watt
- 0.4 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 | - Hitachi SR16000 (L2 then Model M1), 322 nodes in the M1 phase | Hitachi | - | Reported | nsrp.nifs.ac.jptop500.org |
| CPU | - IBM POWER7 8C 3.84GHz, 10,304 cores in the M1 phase | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | IBM AIX Operating systems Unix (System V-derived) · Proprietary IBM AIX | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Fourth-generation Plasma Simulator of the National Institute for Fusion Science, a Hitachi SR16000 that NIFS describes as running 2009 to 2015, first as the SR16000 L2 (128 nodes, 77 TFlop/s peak, 16 TB) and later as the M1 (322 nodes, 315 TFlop/s peak, 40.25 TB, 2 PB external storage), succeeded by the Fujitsu FX100 in 2015. TOP500 lists the M1 configuration: 10,304 POWER7 8C 3.84 GHz cores (322 nodes of 32 cores), AIX, 253 TFlop/s Rmax, 316.21 TFlop/s Rpeak and 708.2 kW, with an entry from June 2009 (65th) through November 2014 (224th). NIFS gives node count and peak but not core count, so the tier is reported. The NIFS page gives no machine-room site, so none is recorded.
Timeline
- 2009 First operational source
- 2009-06 List debut at #65 (June 2009) source
- 2015 Decommissioned source
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 Plasma Simulator SR16000
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 |
|---|---|---|
| nsrp.nifs.ac.jp | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-13 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.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.