Supercomputers/Systems/Polytechnic RSC Tornado
Russia · upgraded · hpc
Polytechnic RSC Tornado
Also known as SPbPU RSC Tornado
Operated by St. Petersburg Polytechnic University at SPbPU 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: 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
- 658.11 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 829.34 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 79.4%
- Cores
- 19,936
- Power
- 320 kW
- Per watt
- 2.1 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 | - RSC Tornado cluster (TOP500 manufacturer: RSC Group) | RSC Group | - | Reported | top500.orgrscgroup.ru |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3 CPUs x86-64 · 14C · 2.6 GHz · 22 nm · 145 W Intel Xeon E5-2697v3 14C 2.6GHz (TOP500 listing); 2020 expansion adds Xeon Platinum 8268 and Gold 6248R nodes | Intel | - | Reported | top500.orgrscgroup.ru |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand FDR Interconnect Fat tree · 56 Gb/s per 4x port · About 1 microsecond Mellanox InfiniBand FDR 56 Gbps per port | NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.orgrscgroup.ru |
| Cooling | - Direct liquid cooling with PUE below 1.2 (RSC project page) | RSC Group | - | Reported | rscgroup.ru |
The read
St. Petersburg Polytechnic University's RSC Tornado cluster. TOP500 lists 19,936 cores of Xeon E5-2697v3 14C 2.6GHz with InfiniBand FDR at 658.11 TFlop/s Rmax, 829.34 TFlop/s Rpeak and 320 kW; it debuted at rank 81 on the November 2014 list and was listed through November 2017. RSC's project page describes a February to April 2020 expansion adding Xeon Platinum 8268 and Gold 6248R nodes (1,309 TFlops peak, 910.31 TFlops Linpack on its page), direct liquid cooling with PUE below 1.2 and about 3.6 PB of tiered storage; those expanded figures were never submitted to TOP500, so the recorded FLOPS are the TOP500 measured ones from 2014.
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
SPbPU Supercomputer Center
- Location
- Saint Petersburg, Russia
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added Polytechnic RSC Tornado at St. Petersburg Polytechnic
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 |
|---|---|---|
| rscgroup.ru | names system and part | Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3, Mellanox InfiniBand FDR |
| top500.org | names system and part | Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3, Mellanox InfiniBand FDR |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
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.
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.