Supercomputers/Systems/Shaheen III - GPU
Saudi Arabia · operational · mixed
Shaheen III - GPU
Operated by KAUST at KAUST Supercomputing Core Lab .
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: 1092 of 1153 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 40 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
- 122.8 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 155.2 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 79.1%
- Cores
- 574,464
- Power
- 1.98 MW
- Per watt
- 62.0 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 EX (2,800 GH200 superchips, direct liquid cooled) | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Verified | top500.orgkaust.edu.sa |
| Accelerator | NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip Accelerators Arm CPU + CUDA GPU · TSMC 4N NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip / GH200 | NVIDIA | - | Verified | top500.orgkaust.edu.sa |
| CPU | NVIDIA Grace CPUs Armv9 (Neoverse V2) · 72C · 3.1 GHz · TSMC 4N NVIDIA Grace 72C 3.1GHz | NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | HPE Slingshot-11 Interconnect Dragonfly · 200 Gb/s per port · Around 2 microseconds Slingshot-11 | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Storage | HPE Cray ClusterStor E1000 Storage Lustre appliance, flash and disk tiers · 700 PB on Frontier (Orion) · About 10 TB/s peak 50 PB added to its HPE Cray ClusterStor E1000 (site-wide) | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | nextplatform.com |
| Cooling | Direct liquid cooling, warm water Cooling Direct-to-chip cold plates, facility water loop · Removes 90+ percent of node heat to liquid direct liquid-cooled HPE Cray EX with 2,800 GH200 | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | kaust.edu.sa |
| Operating system | HPE Cray Operating System Operating systems SUSE-derived Linux, container-based management · Proprietary layer over open-source Linux HPE Cray OS | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
AI datacenter metrics
Figures beyond an accelerator count, each with who stated it. What can and cannot be compared across AI datacenters.
| Metric | Value | As of | Basis | Note | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accelerators | 2,800 accelerators | 2024-11 | Operator stated | NVIDIA GH200 superchips in the direct liquid-cooled HPE Cray EX GPU partition, per KAUST. | kaust.edu.sa |
The read
The GPU partition of the same physical Shaheen III installation as `shaheen-iii`'s CPU partition. KAUST's own account treats the machine as one integrated system, but TOP500 carries the two partitions as separate entries with separate HPL submissions, and this dataset follows that split: 2,800 NVIDIA GH200 superchips, direct liquid cooled, on the same HPE Cray EX site as the CPU partition.
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
KAUST Supercomputing Core Lab
- Location
- Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling
- Commissioned
- 2009
Change history
- 2026-10-04 Added AI datacenter metrics for shaheen-iii-gpu
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 |
|---|---|---|
| top500.org | names system and part | NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip, NVIDIA Grace, HPE Slingshot-11, HPE Cray ClusterStor E1000, HPE Cray Operating System |
| kaust.edu.sa | names system and part | NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip, NVIDIA Grace, HPE Cray ClusterStor E1000, Direct liquid cooling, warm water, HPE Cray Operating System |
Checked 2026-10-09 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.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.