USA · decommissioned · hpc

Vulcan

Operated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at Livermore Computing 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: 4.29 PFlop/s
Rpeak: 5.03 PFlop/s
Rmax ÷ Rpeak: 85.3%
Cores: 393,216
Power: 1.97 MW
Per watt: 2.2 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 Blue Gene/Q, 24 racks	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Verified	top500.org hpc.llnl.gov
CPU	IBM PowerPC A2 (Power BQC) CPUs PowerPC A2 · 18C · 1.6 GHz · 45 nm · 55 W Power BQC 16C 1.6GHz	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org hpc.llnl.gov
Interconnect	IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus Interconnect 5D torus · 2 GB/s per link per direction 5D torus	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	hpc.llnl.gov
Operating system	IBM Compute Node Kernel Operating systems Microkernel, no dynamic scheduling · Proprietary RHEL with Compute Node Kernel	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	hpc.llnl.gov

The read

Livermore's 24-rack IBM Blue Gene/Q, the smaller sibling of Sequoia, shared between the ASC programme and the industry-facing M&IC programme, with 1.5 of its 5 PFlop/s reserved for collaborations with industry and universities. It first appeared on the June 2012 TOP500 as a partial machine, was 65th on the November 2012 list once complete, and reached ninth in June 2013. LLNL's ASC page gives service as 2012 to 2019; LLNL's pages are one organization, so they do not corroborate each other. LLNL and TOP500 agree on the 393,216 cores. TOP500 is the only source for Rmax and Rpeak, so the tier is reported.

Timeline

2012 First operational source
2013-06 List debut at #9 (June 2013) source
2019 Decommissioned source

Public list appearances

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

#9: TOP500, June 2013 →

Site & facility

Livermore Computing Center

Location: Livermore, CA, USA
Cooling: Direct liquid cooling (warm water)
Commissioned: 1996

hpc.llnl.gov llnl.gov

Change history

2026-09-20 Added with a rank pointer on the edition where it ranked highest

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
hpc.llnl.gov	names system and part	IBM PowerPC A2 (Power BQC), IBM Compute Node Kernel
top500.org	names system and part	IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus

Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.