Supercomputers/Systems/VSC-2
Austria · decommissioned · hpc
VSC-2
Also known as Vienna Scientific Cluster 2
Operated by Vienna Scientific Cluster at Vienna Scientific Cluster .
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
- 152.90 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 182.83 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 83.6%
- Cores
- 20,776
- Power
- 430 kW
- Per watt
- 0.4 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 VSC-2, and those in Austria. 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 | 152.90 TFlop/s | #120 of 179 · bottom 34% | - |
| Energy efficiency | 0.4 GF/W | #101 of 133 · bottom 25% | - |
| Rmax ÷ Rpeak | 83.6 % | #84 of 178 · top 47% | - |
| Power draw | 430 kW | #73 of 135 · bottom 47% | - |
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 Saxonid 6100, 1,314 nodes | MEGWARE | 1,314 reported | Reported | top500.orgdocs.vsc.ac.at |
| CPU | - Two AMD Opteron 6132 HE 8-core per node | AMD | - | Reported | top500.orgdocs.vsc.ac.at |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand QDR Interconnect Fat tree · 40 Gb/s per 4x port QDR InfiniBand | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.orgdocs.vsc.ac.at |
The read
Second Vienna Scientific Cluster, installed May 2011 at the Arsenal TU building in Vienna and out of service by the end of December 2018. The VSC documentation describes 1,314 nodes, each with two 8-core AMD Opteron 6132 HE and 32 GB RAM on QDR InfiniBand (MEGWARE Saxonid 6100 per TOP500). TOP500 lists 20,776 cores, Rmax 152.9 TF, Rpeak 182.83 TF and 430 kW, ranked 56 in Jun 2011 (135.6 TF), 77 in Nov 2011 and 424 in Jun 2014. Discrepancies: 1,314 nodes times 16 cores is 21,024, not TOP500's 20,776, and the VSC page says it ranked 71st in June 2011 where TOP500 shows 56th. Predecessor vsc-1, successor vsc-3.
Timeline
- 2011-05 First operational source
- 2011-11 List debut at #77 (November 2011) source
- 2018-12 Decommissioned 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
Change history
- 2026-10-17 VSC-2 added from its source pages
Nearby in scale
The machines closest to VSC-2 by Rmax, smaller to larger.
- Faenov (Windows Azure) · USA, operational · 0.15 PFlop/s
- Fionn · Ireland, decommissioned · 0.14 PFlop/s
- Guillimin · Canada, decommissioned · 0.14 PFlop/s
- Maverick (TACC) · USA, operational · 0.16 PFlop/s
- Hexagon · Norway, decommissioned · 0.16 PFlop/s
- Diamond (ERDC) · USA, operational · 0.16 PFlop/s
Related systems
Same site
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 |
|---|---|---|
| docs.vsc.ac.at | names system and part | Mellanox InfiniBand QDR |
| top500.org | names system and part | Mellanox InfiniBand QDR |
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.