Supercomputers/Systems/Sunway TaihuLight
China · operational · hpc
Sunway TaihuLight
Also known as Shenwei TaihuLight
Operated by National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi at National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi .
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
- 93.01 PFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 125.4 PFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 74.1%
- Cores
- 10,649,600
- Power
- 15.37 MW
- Per watt
- 6.1 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 Sunway TaihuLight, and those in China. 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 | 93.01 PFlop/s | #3 of 242 · top 1% | #2 of 27 · top 4% |
| Energy efficiency | 6.1 GF/W | #21 of 176 · top 11% | #4 of 19 · top 17% |
| Rmax ÷ Rpeak | 74.1 % | #104 of 238 · top 43% | #7 of 27 · top 23% |
| Power draw | 15,371 kW | #1 of 178 · highest | #3 of 19 · top 11% |
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 | - NRCPC | NRCPC | - | Reported | nsccwx.cn |
| CPU | Sunway SW26010 CPUs Sunway (custom RISC) · 260C · 1.45 GHz · 28 nm Sunway SW26010 260C 1.45GHz | NRCPC | 40,960 reported | Reported | nsccwx.cn |
| Interconnect | Sunway interconnect Interconnect Two-level fat tree · 16 GB/s per node · About 1 microsecond Sunway interconnect | NRCPC | - | Verified | nsccwx.cnnetlib.org |
| Storage | Sunway TaihuLight storage network Storage Storage network plus disk array · 20 PB · 288 GB/s total I/O bandwidth Storage network and disk array at 20PB | NRCPC | - | Reported | aiichironakano.github.io |
| Cooling | Direct liquid cooling, warm water Cooling Direct-to-chip cold plates, facility water loop · Removes 90+ percent of node heat to liquid water cooled | NRCPC | - | Reported | nsccwx.cnfederalregister.gov |
| Cooling | Chilled-water indirect liquid cooling Cooling Closed-coupled liquid cooling, chiller-backed · 28 MW cooling capacity, Climaveneta chillers at Sunway TaihuLight Closed-coupled chilled water cooling | NRCPC | - | Reported | netlib.org |
| Operating system | Sunway RaiseOS Operating systems Linux derivative for the Sunway architecture · Domestic distribution Sunway RaiseOS | NRCPC | - | Estimated | nsccwx.cn |
Engineering, funding and access
What Sunway TaihuLight runs on, who paid for it and how people get time on it. Each line carries who said it and when.
Hardware
| Item | Detail | As of | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compute nodes | 40,960 nodes160 supernodes of 256 nodes; 40 cabinets of 1024 nodes | 2016-06 | Press report | netlib.org |
| Total memory | 1,310 TB1.31 PB, 32 GB per node | 2016-06 | Press report | netlib.org |
| Interconnect and topology | Custom Sunway network over PCI-E 3.0 in three levels (central switching, supernode, resource-sharing); 70 TB/s bisection bandwidth, network diameter 7, 12 GB/s MPI bandwidth, about 1 us latencyReport states Mellanox supplied the HCA and switch chips | 2016-06 | Press report | netlib.org |
| Cooling design | Close-coupled chilled water cooling with customized liquid cooling units; 15 Climaveneta magnetic-levitation chillers for a 28 MW cooling plant with heat exchange at board level | 2016-06 | Press report | netlib.org |
Software
| Item | Detail | As of | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Programming and software stack | Sunway RaiseOS 2.0.5 (Linux based), C/C++ and Fortran compilers, Sunway OpenACC for the SW26010 | 2016-06 | Press report | netlib.org |
Funding
| Item | Detail | As of | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stated cost | 270 USD mReport states 1.8 billion RMB for the system, approximately 270 million USD, including building, hardware, R&D and software | 2016-06 | Press report | netlib.org |
| Procurement | Developed by NRCPC with a processor from the Shanghai High Performance IC Design Center, installed at NSC Wuxi by a joint team of Tsinghua University, Wuxi city and Jiangsu province | 2016-06 | Press report | netlib.org |
Results
| Item | Detail | As of | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Notable result | 2016: three Gordon Bell finalist applications (atmospheric dynamics, ocean surface waves, phase-field simulation) scaled to about 8 million cores | 2016-06 | Press report | netlib.org |
The read
The first No. 1 built on entirely domestically designed processors. No Intel, no AMD, no NVIDIA anywhere in the compute path: NRCPC's SW26010 manycore part, a domestic fabric, and a domestic OS. On our domestic-substitution index it is the first system in the dataset to score 1.0, six years before the question became a mainstream policy topic. Whether later Chinese systems sustained that score is the single most useful time series we publish.
Timeline
- 2014 Announced source
- 2016-06 List debut at #1 (June 2016) source
- 2016-06 First operational source
- 2016-06 Sunway TaihuLight took No. 1 on the TOP500 at 93 PFlop/s with 10,649,600 cores source
- 2019-06 NRCPC added to the US Entity List source
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Site & facility
National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi
- Location
- Wuxi, China
- Cooling
- Direct liquid cooling
- Commissioned
- 2016
Change history
- 2026-09-22 Gained a Green500 rank pointer (#87 on the 2023-11 list)
Nearby in scale
The machines closest to Sunway TaihuLight by Rmax, smaller to larger.
Related systems
Same site
- Sunway OceanLight · China, operational, 2021
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 |
|---|---|---|
| link.springer.com | blocked our fetch | - |
| netlib.org | names system and part | Sunway SW26010, Sunway interconnect, Sunway RaiseOS, Sunway TaihuLight storage network |
Checked 2026-10-18 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Related news
- Sugon, NRCPC and Hygon added to the US Entity List · Federal RegisterThe action covered the Sunway designer, a major Chinese integrator, and the AMD x86 licensee, closing several import paths at once and setting up the domestic substitution visible in later systems.
Further reading
Power and cooling
Why air ran out at 20 kW a rack, how warm-water cooling removes the chillers, and what PUE conceals.
Inside a node
Latency-optimised versus throughput-optimised processors, NUMA, and the end of the host-to-device copy.
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.