Supercomputers/Systems/Perlmutter
USA · upgraded · mixed
Perlmutter
Also known as NERSC-9
Operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at NERSC, Shyh Wang Hall .
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: 32 of 52 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 4 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
- 79.23 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 113.0 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 70.1%
- Cores
- -
- 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 | - HPE Cray EX235n | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | nersc.govhpe.com |
| Accelerator | NVIDIA A100 SXM4 40GB Accelerators NVIDIA A100 SXM4 40 GB | NVIDIA | - | Reported | nersc.govhpe.com |
| CPU | AMD EPYC 7763 (Milan) CPUs AMD EPYC 7763 64C 2.45GHz | AMD | - | Reported | nersc.govhpe.com |
| Interconnect | HPE Slingshot-11 Interconnect Slingshot-11 | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | nersc.govhpe.com |
| Storage | HPE Cray ClusterStor E1000 Storage all-flash Lustre on ClusterStor E1000 | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | nersc.govhpe.com |
| Cooling | Direct liquid cooling, warm water Cooling HPE Cray EX cabinet: 100% direct liquid cooled | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | nersc.govhpe.com |
| Operating system | HPE Cray Operating System Operating systems HPE Cray Operating System | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | nersc.govhpe.com |
The read
Named for the astrophysicist whose supernova work ran at NERSC. Architecturally a bridge between the CPU-only and accelerator eras, delivered in two phases, and one of the first large AMD-CPU-plus-NVIDIA-GPU pairings at this scale - a combination that is now common and was not obvious in 2018.
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
NERSC, Shyh Wang Hall
- Location
- Berkeley, CA, USA
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling with cooling towers
- Commissioned
- 2015
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 |
|---|---|---|
| hpe.com | does not name this system | Direct liquid cooling, warm water, HPE Cray Operating System, HPE Cray ClusterStor E1000 |
| nersc.gov | names system and part | NVIDIA A100 SXM4 40GB, Direct liquid cooling, warm water, HPE Cray Operating System, HPE Cray ClusterStor E1000 |
Checked 2026-09-08 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
Inside a node
Why accelerators exist, what the memory hierarchy costs, and how the CPU and accelerator merged onto one package.
Power and cooling
Why air ran out at 20 kW a rack, how warm-water cooling removes the chillers, and what PUE conceals.
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.