Supercomputers/Systems/HELICS
Germany · operational · hpc
HELICS
Also known as Heidelberg Linux Cluster System
Operated by Heidelberg University .
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
- 825.0 GFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 1.43 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 57.5%
- Cores
- 512
- 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.
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 HELICS, and those in Germany. 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 | 825.0 GFlop/s | #47 of 54 · bottom 14% | #89 of 95 · bottom 7% |
| Rmax ÷ Rpeak | 57.5 % | #38 of 54 · bottom 31% | #84 of 94 · bottom 12% |
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 | - MEGWARE HELICS Athlon 1.4 GHz Myrinet cluster | MEGWARE | - | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | - AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz, 512 processors | AMD | 512 reported | Reported | top500.orgcio.de |
| Interconnect | - Myrinet | Myricom | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Linux cluster of 512 AMD Athlon processors (1.4 GHz) on Myrinet, built by MEGWARE per TOP500 and run by Heidelberg University's Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) with participation from the University of Mannheim. A cio.de article of 3 June 2002 gives a cost of about 1.26 million euros, a performance of 1,400 gigaflops (which matches TOP500's Rpeak of 1,433.6, not the Linpack Rmax of 825 GFlop/s), commodity PC components and use for scientific modelling and simulation. cio.de also says it ranked 24th worldwide and 4th in Europe on the November 2001 TOP500 list, but TOP500's own record shows a first appearance in June 2002 at rank 35 and a last one in June 2004 at rank 321 (https://www.top500.org/system/167286/); the 2001 claim could not be reconciled with the list data and is not used here. The system URL given by TOP500 is helics.uni-hd.de.
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
- 2026-10-17 Added HELICS
Nearby in scale
The machines closest to HELICS by Rmax, smaller to larger.
- PRESTO III · Japan, operational · 0 PFlop/s
- NCSA Titan Itanium Cluster · USA, operational · 0 PFlop/s
- DWD Cray T3E1200 · Germany, operational · 0 PFlop/s
- UTokyo SR8000/128 · Japan, decommissioned · 0 PFlop/s
- ECMWF VPP5000/100 · United Kingdom, decommissioned · 0 PFlop/s
- KEK SR8000-F1/100 · Japan, decommissioned · 0 PFlop/s
Related systems
Same operator
- bwForCluster Helix · Germany, operational, 2022
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 |
|---|---|---|
| cio.de | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-18 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.