Supercomputers/Systems/NOAA FSL HPTi Xeon Cluster
USA · operational · hpc
NOAA FSL HPTi Xeon Cluster
Also known as FSL Aspen Systems dual Xeon Myrinet cluster
Operated by NOAA .
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
- 3.34 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 6.76 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 49.4%
- Cores
- 1,536
- 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 | - HPTi integrated and delivered the 768-node dual Xeon cluster | HPTi | - | Reported | top500.orglwn.net |
| Integrator | - Aspen Systems dual 2.2 GHz Xeon nodes | Aspen Systems | 768 reported | Reported | top500.orglwn.net |
| CPU | - Intel Pentium 4 Xeon 2.2 GHz, 1,536 processors | Intel | 1,536 reported | Reported | top500.orglwn.net |
| Interconnect | - Myricom Myrinet 2000 | Myricom | - | Reported | top500.orglwn.net |
The read
NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory Linux cluster that TOP500 lists as 'Aspen Systems, Dual Xeon 2.2 GHz - Myrinet2000' (vendor HPTi): 1,536 Xeon 2.2 GHz cores, Rmax 3,337 and Rpeak 6,758 GFlop/s, rank 8 in November 2002 and last at rank 346 in November 2006 (https://www.top500.org/system/167293/). An article carried by LWN, reproducing Aspen Systems' account, says the machine has 768 dual 2.2 GHz Xeon nodes assembled by Aspen with Myricom Myrinet, was integrated and delivered by High Performance Technologies Inc. (HPTi), ranked 8th on the 20th TOP500 edition and made NOAA's system the second fastest Intel-based supercomputer; it quotes about 3.3 TFlop/s as the LINPACK figure, in line with TOP500's Rmax. Possible lineage: Nextgov (May 2000) describes FSL's earlier HPTi-built Linux cluster 'Jet' (Compaq Alpha nodes on Myrinet, 276 processors at the time, contract awarded September 1999 for about $17 million, expansion to 1,500 processors planned by 2002, https://nextgov.com/digital-government/2000/05/noaa-unveils-linux-jet-stream/252575). The fetched sources do not name the 2002 Xeon system as Jet, so that link is not asserted.
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
- 2026-10-17 Added NOAA FSL HPTi Xeon Cluster
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.
Every source cited on this page was readable, and none of them mentions this system. They are cited at page granularity, normally because no stable deep link could be found. That is a real weakness in this row and it is why the system carries a confidence tier below verified. See how this check works.
| Cited source | Result | Found on the page |
|---|---|---|
| lwn.net | does not name this system | - |
| top500.org | does not name this system | - |
Checked 2026-10-18 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.