Supercomputers/Systems/Zenith (Dell EMC)
USA · operational · hpc
Zenith (Dell EMC)
Also known as Dell EMC Zenith
Operated by Dell Technologies .
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
- 1.01 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 1.86 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 54.1%
- Cores
- 24,240
- 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 EMC PowerEdge C6420 and C6320p nodes | Dell Technologies | - | Verified | top500.orgservethehome.com |
| Accelerator | - Intel Xeon Phi 7210, 7230 and 7290 Knights Landing, 160 nodes | Intel | - | Verified | servethehome.comtop500.org |
| CPU | Intel Xeon Gold 6148 CPUs x86-64 · 20C · 2.4 GHz · 14 nm · 150 W Intel Xeon Gold 6148 20C 2.4GHz, 422 dual-socket nodes | Intel | 844 reported | Verified | servethehome.comtop500.org |
| Interconnect | Omni-Path Architecture Interconnect Fat tree · 100 Gb/s per port · About 1 microsecond Intel Omni-Path 100 fabric | Cornelis Networks | - | Verified | servethehome.comtop500.org |
The read
Zenith is the Dell EMC HPC and AI Innovation Lab cluster used for customer benchmarking and evaluations, a mix of Xeon Gold 6148 (Dell C6420) and Xeon Phi Knights Landing (C6320p) nodes on Intel Omni-Path. ServeTheHome (6 July 2018) describes 422 dual Xeon Gold 6148 nodes and 160 Xeon Phi 7210, 7230 and 7290 nodes in a 13,000 square foot lab, 1.0 PFlops sustained and 1.58 PFlops peak, at 265th on the June 2018 list. The TOP500 entry used here lists 24,240 cores, 1.01 PFlop/s Rmax and 1.86 PFlop/s Rpeak that month (Rpeak later 1.58); earlier Zenith versions were listed from November 2016 and the system last appears in November 2019 (483rd).
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
- 2026-10-07 Added Zenith (Dell EMC), a mid-list TOP500 system (2018-06 265)
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 | Intel Xeon Gold 6148, Omni-Path Architecture |
| servethehome.com | names system and part | Intel Xeon Gold 6148, Omni-Path Architecture |
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.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.