Supercomputers/Systems/Zenobe
Belgium · decommissioned · hpc
Zenobe
Also known as Cenaero Zenobe; Walloon Tier-1 supercomputer
Operated by Cenaero .
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: 1263 of 1345 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 56 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
- 332.56 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 407.69 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 81.6%
- Cores
- 13,968
- Power
- 282 kW
- Per watt
- 1.2 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 | - Bull bullx B500/B510 cluster | Bull | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 CPUs x86-64 · 12C · 2.7 GHz · 22 nm · 130 W Intel Xeon E5-2697v2 12-core 2.7 GHz, 13,968 cores in the TOP500 listing | Intel | - | Reported | top500.orgweb.archive.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand QDR Interconnect Fat tree · 40 Gb/s per 4x port InfiniBand QDR | NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The Walloon Region's Tier-1 supercomputer, operated by Cenaero and named for Zenobe Gramme. Cenaero's page (July 2022 web archive snapshot) says it combines a 2011 machine of about 3,300 cores, a PRACE-funded extension of about 8,200 cores added at the end of 2013 and a renewal of the 2011 nodes with 5,760 cores at the end of 2015, for nearly 14,000 cores and over 330 TFlop/s sustained, a EUR 5.5 million investment run in its Tier-1 configuration for three years from 1 July 2014, with its best TOP500 position, 300th, in November 2014. TOP500 lists a Bull bullx B500/B510 cluster of Xeon E5-2697v2 12-core 2.7 GHz processors on InfiniBand QDR, with 13,968 cores, 332.56 TFlop/s Rmax, 407.69 TFlop/s Rpeak and 282 kW in June 2016 (416th), and 300th in November 2014. The CECI consortium page (https://www.ceci-hpc.be/clusters/zenobe/) says Zenobe has 13,536 Haswell and Ivy Bridge cores and is decommissioned, without a date.
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
- 2026-10-09 Zenobe added, verified on TOP500 and the operator or a second source
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 |
|---|---|---|
| web.archive.org | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2, Mellanox InfiniBand QDR |
Checked 2026-10-13 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.