Supercomputers/Systems/Fission (INL)
USA · operational · hpc
Fission (INL)
Also known as Fission Appro Xtreme-X3
Operated by INL .
Researched with AI assistance, checked by scripts. These rows were researched by AI agents reading public operator, laboratory and vendor sources, appended by scripts and checked by automated validation; no subject-matter expert has reviewed them (how this site is made). A mechanical second-reader pass has since fetched every cited source: 1350 of 1581 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 64 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
- 91.03 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 120.12 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 75.8%
- Cores
- 12,512
- Power
- 360 kW
- Per watt
- 0.3 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.
How it compares
Ranked against the other machines in this dataset that report the same figure: those that first came into service within two years of Fission (INL), and those in USA. Computed from our tables; a metric is ranked only when at least eight peers report it.
| Metric | Value | Against its era | Against its country |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rmax | 91.03 TFlop/s | #146 of 179 · bottom 20% | #252 of 332 · bottom 25% |
| Energy efficiency | 0.3 GF/W | #113 of 133 · bottom 16% | #145 of 162 · bottom 12% |
| Rmax ÷ Rpeak | 75.8 % | #127 of 178 · bottom 30% | #151 of 331 · top 45% |
| Power draw | 360 kW | #82 of 135 · bottom 41% | #110 of 171 · bottom 37% |
Every metric is ranked largest-first, so a high power-draw rank means a big power draw, not a good one. Rmax ÷ Rpeak uses HPL-measured results only. Rankings move as machines are added; they describe this dataset, not the world.
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 | - Appro Xtreme-X3, 14 racks | Appro HPENYSE
rolls up to Hewlett Packard Enterprise | - | Reported | world-nuclear-news.orgtop500.org |
| CPU | - AMD Opteron 6136 8C 2.4GHz, 12,512 cores | AMD | - | Reported | top500.orgworld-nuclear-news.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand QDR Interconnect Fat tree · 40 Gb/s per 4x port Infiniband QDR | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Fission was Idaho National Laboratory's Appro Xtreme-X supercomputer, reported by World Nuclear News on 19 May 2011 as six times as powerful as its predecessor Icestorm (see ice-storm-inl), with 14 racks and 12,512 AMD Opteron cores, used among other things to model uranium fuel-rod cladding over the first 18 months in a reactor. TOP500 lists the Appro Xtreme-X3 with Opteron 6136 8C 2.4 GHz and InfiniBand QDR at 91.03 TFlop/s Rmax, 120.12 TFlop/s Rpeak and 360 kW, ranked 99th in June 2011, 138th in November 2011, 225th in June 2012 and 365th in November 2012 (its last list). World Nuclear News calls 91 teraflops the peak, which equals TOP500's Rmax rather than its Rpeak.
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
- 2026-10-18 Fission (INL) added from its source pages
Nearby in scale
The machines closest to Fission (INL) by Rmax, smaller to larger.
- Formosa 5 · Taiwan, operational · 0.09 PFlop/s
- Epic (iVEC) · Australia, operational · 0.09 PFlop/s
- CHEOPS (Cologne) · Germany, operational · 0.09 PFlop/s
- Virgo (IIT Madras) · India, operational · 0.09 PFlop/s
- BGW · USA, decommissioned · 0.09 PFlop/s
- Miztli · Mexico, operational · 0.09 PFlop/s
Related systems
Same operator
- INL Falcon · USA, decommissioned, 2014
- Ice Storm · USA, operational, 2007
- Lemhi · USA, decommissioned, 2018
- Sawtooth · USA, operational, 2019
- Teton · USA, operational, 2026
- Wind River · USA, operational
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.