PSC Cray T3D

Also known as T3D MC256-8 at Pittsburgh

Operated by PSC at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center .

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: 25.3 GFlop/s
Rpeak: 38.4 GFlop/s
Rmax ÷ Rpeak: 65.9%
Cores: 256
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	- Cray Research Cray T3D MC256-8	Cray HPENYSE rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise	-	Reported	top500.org en.wikipedia.org
CPU	- DEC Alpha EV4 149 MHz, 256 processing elements	Digital Equipment Corporation HPENYSE rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise	256 reported	Reported	top500.org
Interconnect	- Cray 3-D torus interconnect	Cray HPENYSE rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise	-	Reported	top500.org
Operating system	- UNICOS	Cray HPENYSE rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise	-	Reported	top500.org

The read

TOP500 lists a Cray T3D MC256-8 at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center installed in 1994 with 256 DEC Alpha EV4 149 MHz processors on a 3-D torus running UNICOS, 25.3 GFLOPS Rmax and 38.4 GFLOPS peak, 13th on the November 1994 list (15th in June 1994 at 21.4 GFLOPS). Wikipedia states that the first T3D delivered was a prototype installed at PSC in early September 1993 before the formal introduction on 27 September 1993, and PSC later hosted T3D MC512-8 and T3E systems. TOP500 is the only source for the figures here, so the tier is reported. The last list evidence is November 1994, which is recorded as the status date.

Timeline

1994 First operational source
1994-11 List debut at #13 (November 1994) source

Public list appearances

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

#13: TOP500, November 1994 →

Site & facility

Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Commissioned: 2021

psc.edu

Change history

2026-10-09 Added PSC Cray T3D

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
en.wikipedia.org	does not name this system	-
top500.org	does not name this system	-

Checked 2026-10-13 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.