Supercomputers/Systems/Edinburgh Cray T3D (Typhoon)
United Kingdom · operational · hpc
Edinburgh Cray T3D (Typhoon)
Also known as T3D serial 6001; Typhoon
Operated by EPCC .
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
- 25.3 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 38.4 GFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 65.9%
- Cores
- 256
- 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 Cray T3D MC256-8 | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.orgtomshardware.com |
| CPU | - DEC Alpha EV4 149 MHz, 256 processing elements | Digital Equipment Corporation HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 256 reported | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | - Cray 3-D torus interconnect | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Operating system | - UNICOS | Cray HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
TOP500 lists a Cray T3D MC256-8 at the University of Edinburgh installed in 1994 with 256 DEC Alpha EV4 149 MHz processors on a 3-D torus running UNICOS, 25.3 GFLOPS Rmax and 38.4 GFLOPS peak, 14th on the November 1994 list (16th in June 1994 at 21.4 GFLOPS). Wikipedia and a May 2026 Tom's Hardware report on an auction lot say the first T3D built, serial number 6001, was Cray's internal development machine that was installed at Edinburgh, nicknamed Typhoon, and ranked Europe's fastest supercomputer on the June 1996 TOP500; the auction listing describes it as a 512-processor MC512 cabinet, so the machine appears to have been enlarged after 1994 (TOP500 also lists an Edinburgh MC320-8 in June 1995). The 256-core figure and Rmax here are the November 1994 TOP500 entry. EPCC's own history page confirms the Cray T3D national service. The tier is reported because the configuration details differ between sources.
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 Edinburgh Cray T3D (Typhoon)
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 |
|---|---|---|
| tomshardware.com | names system only | - |
| 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.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.