Supercomputers/Systems/CPTEC NEC SX-6
Brazil · operational · hpc
CPTEC NEC SX-6
Also known as CPTEC SX-6/32M4
Operated by INPE at INPE Cachoeira Paulista Site .
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
- 253.6 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 256.0 GFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 99.1%
- Cores
- 32
- 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 | - NEC SX-6/32M4 (TOP500 listing) | NEC | - | Reported | top500.orgagencia.fapesp.br |
| CPU | NEC SX-6 vector processor CPUs NEC vector · 1C · 0.5 GHz · 150 nm NEC SX-6 1GHz vector processors, 32 in the TOP500 entry (96 in the 2004 full system per FAPESP) | NEC | - | Reported | top500.orgagencia.fapesp.br |
The read
The NEC SX-6 vector supercomputer of INPE's weather and climate centre CPTEC at Cachoeira Paulista, used for numerical weather prediction and climate forecasting. TOP500 lists an SX-6/32M4 with 32 NEC 1GHz processors on a multi-stage crossbar running Super-UX, installed in 2002, 253.60 GFlop/s Rmax and 256 GFlop/s Rpeak, ranked 459th on the June 2003 list, its only appearance found, which is the basis for the status date. Agencia FAPESP (June 2004) says the first unit arrived in August 2002 and went into operation in December 2002, and that the second batch received on 29 June 2004 brought the full system to 12 nodes of eight processors (96 processors), 768 gigaflops peak, 768 GB of memory and 16 TB of storage, making Brazil one of seven countries with dedicated high-capacity weather and climate computing. A July 2007 Agencia FAPESP article describes it as the system replaced by a new cluster, but gives no retirement date. This row records the 32-processor entry TOP500 listed. The Tupa Cray system at the same site in this dataset came later.
Timeline
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Site & facility
INPE Cachoeira Paulista Site
- Location
- Cachoeira Paulista, Brazil
- Commissioned
- 2010
Change history
- 2026-10-09 Added CPTEC NEC SX-6
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 |
|---|---|---|
| agencia.fapesp.br | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | NEC SX-6 vector processor |
Checked 2026-10-13 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.