Supercomputers/Systems/Sunspot
USA · operational · hpc
Sunspot
Deep dive: Aurora: eight years from contract to first list
Also known as Aurora test and development system
Operated by Argonne National Laboratory at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility .
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
- -
- Rpeak
- -
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- -
- 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accelerator | - six Intel Data Center GPU Max (Ponte Vecchio) per node, 128 nodes | Intel | 768 estimated | Reported | eurekalert.orgtheregister.com |
| CPU | - two Intel Xeon CPU Max (Sapphire Rapids) per node, 128 nodes | Intel | 256 estimated | Reported | eurekalert.orgtheregister.com |
| Interconnect | - HPE Slingshot interconnect | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | theregister.com |
The read
Argonne's two-rack, 128-node Aurora test and development system, built to the same architecture as Aurora: two Intel Xeon CPU Max processors and six Intel Data Center GPU Max (Ponte Vecchio) accelerators per node on HPE Slingshot. Argonne's release and The Register independently give the 128 nodes, two racks and per-node configuration, so the tier is verified; the 768 GPU and 256 CPU totals are our arithmetic, marked estimated. On site since December 2022, it served more than 180 researchers from over 20 application teams preparing codes for Aurora by April 2023. No later status page was fetched, so the status date is that of the sources. It is not on the TOP500 list.
Timeline
- 2022-12 First operational source
Site & facility
Argonne Leadership Computing Facility
- Location
- Lemont, IL, USA
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling (warm water)
- Commissioned
- 2006
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added Sunspot, Argonne's Aurora test system
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 |
|---|---|---|
| eurekalert.org | names system only | - |
| theregister.com | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.