Supercomputers/Systems/Zumbrota
France · operational · hpc
Zumbrota
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
- 715.55 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 838.86 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 85.3%
- Cores
- 65,536
- Power
- 328.75 kW
- Per watt
- 2.2 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/Q | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | IBM PowerPC A2 (Power BQC) CPUs PowerPC A2 · 18C · 1.6 GHz · 45 nm · 55 W IBM Power BQC 16C 1.6GHz, 65,536 cores | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus Interconnect 5D torus · 2 GB/s per link per direction IBM Blue Gene/Q custom interconnect | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
EDF R&D's IBM BlueGene/Q supercomputer, named Zumbrota in the TOP500: 65,536 cores of Power BQC 16C 1.6GHz on IBM's custom interconnect, running Linux, drawing 328.75 kW. It debuted at rank 30 on the June 2012 list at 690.2 TFlop/s Rmax (the figure rose to 715.55 TFlop/s on later lists, against 838.86 TFlop/s Rpeak) and last appeared at rank 498 on June 2018, which is the basis for the status date. TOP500 lists the site as EDF R&D; no retirement notice was found.
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 Zumbrota
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 BlueGene/Q 5D torus |
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.