Vesta (Argonne)

Also known as ALCF Blue Gene/Q Vesta

Operated by Argonne National Laboratory at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility .

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: 357.78 TFlop/s
Rpeak: 419.43 TFlop/s
Rmax ÷ Rpeak: 85.3%
Cores: 32,768
Power: 164.38 kW
Per watt: 2.2 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	- IBM Blue Gene/Q, 2 cabinets, 2,048 nodes	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org web.archive.org
CPU	IBM PowerPC A2 (Power BQC) CPUs PowerPC A2 · 18C · 1.6 GHz · 45 nm · 55 W IBM PowerPC A2 (Power BQC) 16C 1.6GHz, 2,048 nodes	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org web.archive.org
Interconnect	IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus Interconnect 5D torus · 2 GB/s per link per direction Blue Gene/Q 5D torus	IBM IBMNYSE	-	Reported	top500.org web.archive.org

The read

IBM Blue Gene/Q at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, the test and development platform for Mira and a resource for Director's Discretionary allocations. TOP500 lists Power BQC 16C 1.6GHz processors on the Blue Gene/Q custom interconnect running Linux, 32,768 cores, Rmax 357.78 TFlop/s, Rpeak 419.43 TFlop/s and 164.38 kW; it first appeared 100th on the June 2012 list and was last listed 486th in November 2016. An ALCF page captured by the Internet Archive in 2017 describes Vesta as an IBM BG/Q with 2 cabinets (two racks, against Mira's 48), 2,048 nodes of 16 1600 MHz PowerPC A2 cores (32,768 cores), 16 GB per node and a 5D torus; the core count agrees across the two independent sources. Named Vesta (Argonne) to keep the page title distinct.

Timeline

2012 First operational source
2012-06 List debut at #100 (June 2012) source

Public list appearances

Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.

#100: TOP500, June 2012 →

Site & facility

Argonne Leadership Computing Facility

Location: Lemont, IL, USA
Cooling: Direct liquid cooling (warm water)
Commissioned: 2006

alcf.anl.gov anl.gov

Change history

2026-10-09 Added Vesta (Argonne)

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
web.archive.org	names system and part	IBM PowerPC A2 (Power BQC)
top500.org	names system and part	IBM BlueGene/Q 5D torus

Checked 2026-10-13 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.