Supercomputers/Systems/AWE Spruce B
United Kingdom · operational · hpc
AWE Spruce B
Also known as Spruce B
Operated by AWE .
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 1581 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
- 767.50 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 798.34 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 96.1%
- Cores
- 35,640
- Power
- 684.5 kW
- Per watt
- 1.1 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.
How it compares
Ranked against the other machines in this dataset that report the same figure: those that first came into service within two years of AWE Spruce B, and those in United Kingdom. Computed from our tables; a metric is ranked only when at least eight peers report it.
| Metric | Value | Against its era | Against its country |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rmax | 767.50 TFlop/s | #102 of 245 · top 41% | #26 of 44 · bottom 43% |
| Energy efficiency | 1.1 GF/W | #125 of 198 · bottom 38% | #15 of 21 · bottom 31% |
| Rmax ÷ Rpeak | 96.1 % | #4 of 243 · top 1% | #2 of 44 · top 2% |
| Power draw | 685 kW | #80 of 199 · top 40% | #7 of 21 · top 30% |
Every metric is ranked largest-first, so a high power-draw rank means a big power draw, not a good one. Rmax ÷ Rpeak uses HPL-measured results only. Rankings move as machines are added; they describe this dataset, not the world.
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 | - SGI ICE X | SGI HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.orginformation-age.com |
| CPU | - Intel Xeon E5-2680v2 10C 2.8GHz | Intel | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand FDR Interconnect Fat tree · 56 Gb/s per 4x port · About 1 microsecond Infiniband FDR | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Operating systems Linux distribution · Open source, commercial support subscription SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 | SUSE | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The smaller of the two Spruce machines TOP500 lists for the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (the larger is awe-spruce-a): an SGI ICE X cluster of 35,640 Xeon E5-2680v2 10C 2.8 GHz cores on FDR InfiniBand, 767.5 TFlop/s Rmax, 798.34 TFlop/s Rpeak, 684.5 kW, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, installation year 2014. Information Age's 20 June 2014 report of three ICE X systems reaching full operational status at AWE is the source for the programme (warhead assurance without nuclear testing) and the SGI build, though it does not name the individual machines or give their sizes. Scientific Computing's 1.8 PFlop/s for Spruce is consistent with the A and B peaks added together. Listed from June 2015 (rank 91) to June 2018 (rank 444), one list fewer than Spruce A. 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
- 2026-10-17 AWE Spruce B added from its source pages
Nearby in scale
The machines closest to AWE Spruce B by Rmax, smaller to larger.
- COMA (PACS-IX) · Japan, operational · 0.75 PFlop/s
- HiPerGator 2.0 · USA, operational · 0.74 PFlop/s
- Earth System Numerical Simulator · China, decommissioned · 0.74 PFlop/s
- ForHLR II · Germany, decommissioned · 0.77 PFlop/s
- GOSAT-2 RCF2 · Japan, operational · 0.77 PFlop/s
- Tianhe-1A Hunan Solution · China, decommissioned · 0.77 PFlop/s
Related systems
Same operator
- AWE Spruce A · United Kingdom, operational, 2014
- AWE Damson · United Kingdom, operational, 2017
- AWE Vulcan · United Kingdom, operational, 2021
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 |
|---|---|---|
| information-age.com | does not name this system | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | Mellanox InfiniBand FDR, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server |
Checked 2026-10-18 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.