Supercomputers/Systems/Kaon
USA · decommissioned · hpc
Kaon
Also known as Fermilab Kaon cluster
Operated by Fermilab .
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
- 6.89 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 9.60 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 71.8%
- Cores
- 2,400
- 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 | - Fermilab built the cluster itself (TOP500 manufacturer: self-made) | Fermilab | - | Reported | top500.orgcomputing.fnal.gov |
| CPU | - AMD Opteron 270 dual-core 2.0 GHz, dual-socket nodes, 600 nodes, 2,400 cores | AMD | - | Verified | computing.fnal.govtop500.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand DDR Interconnect Fat tree · 20 Gb/s per 4x port · About 2 microseconds Mellanox InfiniBand DDR fabric | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Verified | computing.fnal.govtop500.org |
| Operating system | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Operating systems Linux distribution · Open source, commercial support subscription SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 | SUSE | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Fermilab's Kaon cluster for lattice QCD, built in house (TOP500 lists the manufacturer as self-made). The Fermilab Lattice QCD facility describes it as 600 nodes with dual-socket dual-core 2.0 GHz Opteron 270 processors on a DDR Mellanox InfiniBand fabric, which gives 2,400 cores, and says it was decommissioned in August 2013. TOP500 lists 2,400 Opteron 2 GHz cores on InfiniBand at 6.89 TFlop/s Rmax and 9.60 TFlop/s Rpeak, running SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, ranked 95th in November 2006, 176th in June 2007 and 390th in November 2007 (its last list).
Timeline
- 2006 First operational source
- 2006-11 List debut at #95 (November 2006) source
- 2013-08 Decommissioned source
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 Kaon
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 |
|---|---|---|
| computing.fnal.gov | names system and part | Mellanox InfiniBand DDR |
| top500.org | names system and part | Mellanox InfiniBand DDR, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server |
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.