Supercomputers/Systems/Cobalt (CCRT)
France · operational · hpc
Cobalt (CCRT)
Also known as CCRT Cobalt; Cobalt bullx DLC
Operated by CEA at CCRT Bruyeres-le-Chatel .
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
- 1.30 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 1.48 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 87.8%
- Cores
- 38,528
- Power
- 539 kW
- Per watt
- 2.4 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 Cobalt (CCRT), and those in France. 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 | 1.30 PFlop/s | #103 of 242 · top 42% | #32 of 52 · bottom 40% |
| Energy efficiency | 2.4 GF/W | #77 of 176 · top 43% | #23 of 42 · bottom 47% |
| Rmax ÷ Rpeak | 87.8 % | #30 of 238 · top 12% | #8 of 51 · top 14% |
| Power draw | 539 kW | #97 of 178 · bottom 47% | #22 of 42 · bottom 50% |
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 | - Bull bullx DLC 720 (designed by Bull, an Atos brand) | Bull | - | Verified | cea.frtop500.org |
| Accelerator | - 18 hybrid nodes with NVIDIA Pascal processors for remote computing and visualisation | NVIDIA | - | Reported | cea.fr |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E5-2680 v4 CPUs x86-64 · 14C · 2.4 GHz · 14 nm · 120 W 2,304 Intel Xeon E5 (Broadwell) processors at 2.4 GHz in the announced build; TOP500 lists Xeon E5-2680v4 14C 2.4GHz | Intel | 2,304 reported | Reported | cea.frtop500.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand EDR Interconnect Fat tree · 100 Gb/s per 4x port · About 0.9 microseconds InfiniBand EDR interconnect | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Verified | cea.frtop500.org |
| Operating system | - bullx SCS | Eviden | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The Bull petascale computer of CEA's industrial computing partnership CCRT (Centre de calcul recherche et technologie), due to be installed at the TGCC in Bruyeres-le-Chatel in mid-2016. CEA's 4 February 2016 press release announces a machine of about 1.4 PFlop/s peak with 2,304 Broadwell Xeon E5 processors (32,256 cores at 2.4 GHz), 18 hybrid nodes with NVIDIA Pascal processors for remote computing and visualisation, a France Genomique partition of 4,032 Broadwell cores plus four 3 TB nodes, InfiniBand EDR and a 2.5 PB external store at 60 GB/s; named users are industrial partners such as Airbus, EDF, Safran and Thales. TOP500 lists Cobalt as a Bull bullx DLC 720 with Xeon E5-2680v4 14-core 2.4 GHz and InfiniBand EDR, 38,528 cores, Rmax 1.30 and Rpeak 1.48 PFlop/s at 539 kW and 23.2 TFlop/s on HPCG, ranked 64th on its first list in June 2016 and 470th on its last, June 2020. The release's two core figures sum to 36,288, not TOP500's 38,528, so the as-built configuration differs from the announced one; the TOP500 numbers are kept. Topaze (topaze) is the later CCRT machine and the status date is the last TOP500 list.
Timeline
- 2016 First operational source
- 2016-02 Announced source
- 2020-06 List debut at #470 (June 2020) source
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Site & facility
Change history
- 2026-10-18 Added Cobalt (CCRT)
Nearby in scale
The machines closest to Cobalt (CCRT) by Rmax, smaller to larger.
- NA-1 · Japan, operational · 1.3 PFlop/s
- Ansel (LLNL) · USA, operational · 1.29 PFlop/s
- Gordon (Navy DSRC) · USA, operational · 1.29 PFlop/s
- Joliot-Curie KNL · France, decommissioned · 1.31 PFlop/s
- Taiwania · Taiwan, decommissioned · 1.33 PFlop/s
- Cedar (SFU) · Canada, decommissioned · 1.34 PFlop/s
Related systems
Same site
- CCRT Airain · France, operational, 2012
Same operator
- Tera-1000-1 · France, operational, 2016
- Joliot-Curie KNL · France, decommissioned, 2017
- Joliot-Curie SKL · France, decommissioned, 2017
- Tera-1000-2 · France, operational, 2017
- Joliot-Curie Rome · France, operational
- Curie · France, decommissioned, 2012
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.