IBM Summit
An IBM supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that held the number 1 spot on the TOP500 list from June 2018 to June 2020.
The United States Department of Energy gave IBM, Nvidia and Mellanox a $325 million contract in November 2014 to build Summit. It ran at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the lab retired it on November 15, 2024.
Summit had 4,608 nodes. Each node held two IBM POWER9 processors and six Nvidia Tesla graphics processors. Its best benchmark result was 148.6 petaflops (quadrillion math operations per second).
Why it matters
Summit was the first supercomputer to reach exaflop speed on a non-standard measure, hitting 1.88 exaflops in a genomic analysis. It ranked fifth in the world for energy efficiency in November 2019.
Key facts
- Contract of $325 million awarded in November 2014.
- Number 1 on the TOP500 list from June 2018 to June 2020.
- 4,608 nodes, each with two POWER9 processors and six Nvidia GPUs.
- 148.6 petaflops on the LINPACK benchmark.
- Retired November 15, 2024.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Summit (supercomputer)", en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer), accessed October 14, 2026.
- Mimms Museum of Technology and Art, "Exhibits", mimmsmuseum.org/exhibits/, accessed October 14, 2026.