Supercomputers/Systems/Frontier2
France · operational · hpc
Frontier2
Also known as Frontier2 BG/L
Operated by EDF .
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
- 95.45 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 111.41 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 85.7%
- Cores
- 32,768
- Power
- 252 kW
- Per watt
- 0.4 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.
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 | - IBM Blue Gene/P | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | IBM PowerPC 450 850MHz CPUs PowerPC · 4C · 0.85 GHz · 90 nm IBM PowerPC 450 4C 850MHz, 32,768 cores | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | IBM BlueGene 3D torus Interconnect 3D torus, plus separate collective and barrier networks · 175 MB/s per link per direction IBM Blue Gene proprietary interconnect | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | IBM Compute Node Kernel Operating systems Microkernel, no dynamic scheduling · Proprietary IBM CNK compute node kernel with SLES 9 on I/O nodes | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
EDF R&D's IBM Blue Gene/P system, listed by TOP500 as Frontier2 BG/L: 32,768 PowerPC 450 850MHz cores on IBM's proprietary interconnect, running CNK/SLES 9, 95.45 TFlop/s Rmax (92.96 on its debut list) and 111.41 TFlop/s Rpeak on 252 kW. It debuted at rank 14 on the June 2008 list and last appeared at rank 328 on November 2012, which is the basis for the status date; no retirement notice was found. Not to be confused with Oak Ridge's Frontier.
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 Frontier2
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 and part | IBM PowerPC 450 850MHz |
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.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.