Supercomputers/Systems/Prolix
France · upgraded · hpc
Prolix
Also known as Meteo-France Prolix; Prolix2
Operated by Meteo-France at Espace Clement Ader (Montaudran) .
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
- 2.17 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 2.53 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 85.5%
- Cores
- 72,000
- Power
- 830.4 kW
- Per watt
- 2.6 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 | - Bull bullx DLC cluster for operational forecasting | Bull | - | Reported | metis.upmc.frtop500.org |
| CPU | - Intel Xeon E5-2698v4 20C 2.2GHz (as listed for Prolix2) | Intel | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand FDR Interconnect Fat tree · 56 Gb/s per 4x port · About 1 microsecond Infiniband FDR | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
The operational half of Meteo-France first scalar supercomputer pair from Bull, housed at the Espace Clement Ader in Montaudran, Toulouse, and used only for operational forecasting code; the operational suite fails over to Beaufix if Prolix has a problem. Meteo-France staff describe the two machines as similar in architecture and power. TOP500 first lists Prolix at rank 81 on the June 2014 list (Rmax 464.86 TFlop/s) and later as Prolix2 (bullx DLC 720, Xeon E5-2698v4 20-core 2.2 GHz, InfiniBand FDR, 72,000 cores, Rmax 2.17 PFlop/s, Rpeak 2.53 PFlop/s, 830 kW), last on the November 2020 list at rank 196; the figures recorded are those of the expanded Prolix2. The Taranis and Belenos pair (already in this dataset) was installed in 2020. Tier reported: the Meteo-France source does not give the processor or core count.
Timeline
- 2014 First operational source
Site & facility
Change history
- 2026-10-09 Added Prolix
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 | Mellanox InfiniBand FDR |
| metis.upmc.fr | does not name this system | - |
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.