Supercomputers/Systems/Tungsten
USA · decommissioned · hpc
Tungsten
Also known as NCSA Dell PowerEdge cluster
Operated by NCSA .
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
- 9.82 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 15.30 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 64.2%
- Cores
- 2,500
- 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 | - Dell PowerEdge 1750 | Dell Technologies | - | Reported | top500.orgnetworkworld.com |
| CPU | - Pentium 4 Xeon 3.06 GHz | Intel | - | Reported | top500.orgnetworkworld.com |
| Operating system | - Red Hat Linux | Red Hat | - | Reported | networkworld.com |
The read
NCSA's Dell PowerEdge 1750 cluster of dual 3.06 GHz Xeon nodes on Myrinet, running Red Hat Linux. TOP500 lists it at 9.82 TFLOPS Rmax, fourth on the November 2003 list, and it remained listed until June 2008. Network World's 2003 report describes 1,280 PowerEdge servers with two Xeons each plus 106 I/O servers; TOP500's core figure of 2,500 is recorded. No retirement date was found. Site left blank because the dataset's only NCSA site is the later National Petascale Computing Facility. TOP500 is the only source for Rmax and Rpeak, so the tier is reported.
Timeline
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Change history
- 2026-10-02 Added Tungsten, the NCSA Dell cluster, fourth on the November 2003 TOP500
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 only | - |
| networkworld.com | does not name this system | - |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.
Inside a node
Latency-optimised versus throughput-optimised processors, NUMA, and the end of the host-to-device copy.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.