Supercomputers/Systems/Osaka SX-ACE
Japan · decommissioned · hpc
Osaka SX-ACE
Also known as SX-ACE (Cybermedia Center, Osaka University)
Operated by D3 Center, Osaka University .
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
- -
- Rpeak
- 423.00 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- -
- Cores
- 6,144
- 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 | - NEC SX-ACE vector supercomputer, 3 clusters of 512 nodes | NEC | - | Reported | hpc.cmc.osaka-u.ac.jp |
| CPU | - NEC SX-ACE four-core vector CPU at 64 GFlop/s per core, one per node, 1,536 nodes | NEC | 1,536 reported | Reported | hpc.cmc.osaka-u.ac.jp |
| Interconnect | - NEC IXS internode crossbar switch, 4 GB/s per direction | NEC | - | Reported | hpc.cmc.osaka-u.ac.jp |
| Storage | - NEC ScaTeFS parallel file system, 2 PB | NEC | - | Reported | hpc.cmc.osaka-u.ac.jp |
| Operating system | NEC SUPER-UX Operating systems Unix (NEC SX-proprietary) · Proprietary NEC Super-UX R21.1 | NEC | - | Reported | hpc.cmc.osaka-u.ac.jp |
The read
NEC SX-ACE vector supercomputer at Osaka University's Cybermedia Center: 3 clusters of 512 nodes (1,536 nodes, 6,144 vector cores), each node a four-core CPU at 64 GFlop/s per core with 64 GB of memory, joined by the NEC IXS crossbar at 4 GB/s per direction, with 2 PB of NEC ScaTeFS storage under Super-UX. Theoretical peak was 423 TFlop/s, falling to 282 TFlop/s across two clusters from April 2020, and the service was terminated on 28 February 2021. The page gives no start date, so none is recorded. Successor to the SX-5 already in this dataset; no HPL result was published.
Timeline
- 2021-02-28 Decommissioned source
Change history
- 2026-10-09 Added Osaka SX-ACE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| hpc.cmc.osaka-u.ac.jp | names system and part | NEC SUPER-UX |
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.