Supercomputers/Systems/ZIB Cray T3D
Germany · operational · hpc
ZIB Cray T3D
Also known as Berlin Landeshoechstleistungsrechner T3D
Operated by Zuse Institute Berlin .
Researched with AI assistance, checked by scripts. These rows were researched by AI agents reading public operator, laboratory and vendor sources, appended by scripts and checked by automated validation; no subject-matter expert has reviewed them (how this site is made). A mechanical second-reader pass has since fetched every cited source: 1350 of 1540 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 64 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
- 25.3 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 38.4 GFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 65.9%
- Cores
- 256
- 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 | - Cray T3D SC256-8/464 | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.orgnetlib.org |
| CPU | - DEC Alpha EV4 149 MHz, 256 processors | Digital Equipment Corporation HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 256 reported | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | - Cray T3D 3-D torus | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | - UNICOS | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Cray T3D with 256 DEC Alpha EV4 149 MHz processors on a 3-D torus running UNICOS at the Konrad Zuse Zentrum (ZIB) in Berlin, Rmax 25.3 and Rpeak 38.4 GFlop/s, listed from November 1995 (rank 38) to June 1998 (rank 209) (https://www.top500.org/system/170975/). The TOP500 report on the 1994 German market (https://netlib.org/benchmark/top500/reports/report94/Europe/node5.html) says a 192-processor T3D had been installed at ZIB in December and was not yet in the 1994 list, with an extension to 256 processors planned for later that year; read in context (the report follows the November 1994 list) the installation month is December 1994, which is the start date used. TOP500 lists the 192-processor stage as a separate June 1995 entry at rank 39 (Rmax 19.05 GFlop/s, https://www.top500.org/system/170966/); this record covers the final 256-processor configuration. The report does not name the exact build-out date of the 256-processor stage; TOP500 gives 1995. ZIB's current systems are lise and konrad-hlrn-iii.
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
- 2026-10-18 Added ZIB Cray T3D (zib)
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.