USA · operational · hpc

Intimidata

Also known as SDSC Blue Gene

Operated by SDSC at San Diego Supercomputer 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: 13.78 TFlop/s
Rpeak: 17.20 TFlop/s
Rmax ÷ Rpeak: 80.1%
Cores: 6,144
Power: 67 kW
Per watt: 0.2 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	- IBM eServer Blue Gene Solution	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org sdsc.edu
CPU	IBM PowerPC 440 700MHz CPUs PowerPC · 2C · 0.7 GHz · 130 nm · 13 W IBM PowerPC 440 dual-core 700 MHz, two processors per node, 6,144 cores in the expanded configuration	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org sdsc.edu
Interconnect	IBM BlueGene 3D torus Interconnect 3D torus, plus separate collective and barrier networks · 175 MB/s per link per direction 3-D torus for point-to-point messaging plus a global tree for collectives	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	sdsc.edu
Operating system	IBM Compute Node Kernel Operating systems Microkernel, no dynamic scheduling · Proprietary IBM Blue Gene compute node kernel (CNK) with SLES 9	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org

The read

San Diego Supercomputer Center's IBM eServer Blue Gene system, the first Blue Gene at an academic institution. SDSC announced it installed and accepted on 19 December 2004 as a single rack of 1,024 compute nodes and 128 I/O nodes (a 1:8 I/O ratio chosen for data-intensive work), two 700 MHz PowerPC processors per node, 5.7 TFlop/s peak and 512 GB of memory, connected by a 3-D torus and a global tree. TOP500 first listed the 2,048-processor machine in June 2005 at 4.71 TFlop/s Rmax, then listed it expanded to 6,144 cores at 13.78 TFlop/s Rmax, 17.20 TFlop/s Rpeak and 67 kW from November 2006 (42nd) through November 2008 (443rd, its last list). The figures here are for the expanded configuration; the expansion is documented only by TOP500.

Timeline

2004-12 First operational source
2006-11 List debut at #42 (November 2006) source

Public list appearances

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

#42: TOP500, November 2006 →

Site & facility

San Diego Supercomputer Center

Location: La Jolla, CA, USA
Commissioned: 2020

sdsc.edu

Change history

2026-10-09 Added Intimidata

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
sdsc.edu	names system and part	IBM PowerPC 440 700MHz, IBM Compute Node Kernel
top500.org	names system and part	IBM PowerPC 440 700MHz, IBM Compute Node Kernel

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