Supercomputers/Systems/ECMWF Cray C916
United Kingdom · operational · hpc
ECMWF Cray C916
Also known as Y-MP C916/16128 at ECMWF
Operated by ECMWF .
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
- 13.7 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 15.2 GFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 89.9%
- Cores
- 16
- 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 Research Y-MP C916/16128 | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | - Cray 238 MHz vector processors, 16 processors | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 16 reported | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | - UNICOS | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
TOP500 lists a Cray Y-MP C916/16128 at ECMWF installed in 1993 with 16 Cray 238 MHz vector processors running UNICOS, 13.7 GFLOPS Rmax and 15.24 GFLOPS peak, 12th on the first TOP500 list in June 1993 and 17th in November 1993, the last list on which it appears. ECMWF is the intergovernmental weather centre at Reading, UK. TOP500 is the only source fetched, so the 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
- 2026-10-09 Added ECMWF Cray C916
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 |
|---|---|---|
| top500.org | names system only | - |
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.
Programming a supercomputer
The software stack beneath the application, and why the OS is now a sovereignty signal as much as a technical choice.