Tuesday 12 March 2013

Name that supercomputer (Quiz)

Instead of a sensible HPC blog post, how about some fun? Can you name these supercomputers?

I'm looking for actual machine names (e.g. 'Sequoia') and the host site (e.g. LLNL). Bonus points for the funding agency (e.g. DOE NNSA) and the machine type (e.g. IBM BlueGene/Q).

Submit your guesses or knowledgeable answers either through the comments field below, or to me on twitter (@hpcnotes).

For the photos, if you are stuck, you might need to use clues from my twitter stream as to where I have been recently.

Answers will be revealed once there have been enough guesses to amuse me. Have fun!


  1. Which supercomputer are we looking underneath?

  2. Acceptance of this leading system became a HPC news topic recently

  3. NAG provides the Computational Science & Engineering Support Service for this one

  4. One letter is all that’s needed to describe this supercomputer

  5. Racing cattle powered by Greek letters

  6. Spock was one of these

  7. Which supercomputer does this photo show the inner rows of?

  8. Memory with a deerstalker & pipe

  9. Put an end to Ming (or did he)?

  10. This plant/leaf is normally silver when used as the national symbol of this one’s host country


2 comments:

Tim Wickberg said...

1. Blue Waters - NCSA / Illinois, NSF, Cray XE6 + XK6
2. Titan - DOE ORNL, Cray XK7
3. HECToR - UK Research Councils, Cray XE6
4. "K" - Japan / RIKEN K Computer, Fujitsu Custom
5. Stampede - NSF XSEDE Program at TACC, Dell Xeon + Xeon Phi + FDR Infiniband cluster
6. Vulcan - DOE/NNSA LLNL, IBM Blue Gene/Q
7. Mira - ANL ALCF, DOE, Blue Gene/Q
8. Sherlock - NSF SCTI Program, Pittsburg Supercomputing Center, YarcData Graph Analytics Platform + Cray XT5
9. Gordon - NSF XSEDE Program at SDSC, Intel Sandy Bridge + Intel SSDs + QDR Infiniband
10. Blue Fern - University of Canterbery, New Zealand - IBM Blue Gene/L + P, POWER7

Andrew said...

Outstanding!