Alps
The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre runs Alps in Lugano as a geo-distributed research infrastructure split into versatile clusters for the User Lab, MeteoSwiss weather forecasting and machine learning and AI.
What it runs and how to get time
From the operator- Used for What the operator says the system is used for: science domains, missions or workloads. Taken from the operator, its funder or the system vendor, not from TOP500.
- Research across sciences via the User Lab, MeteoSwiss operational weather forecasting, and machine learning and AI workloads, each on its own vCluster 4
- How to get time How researchers or customers get time on the system, naming the allocation programme where the operator states one.
- CSCS User Lab calls: production projects, small projects (up to 8,000 node hours) and CHRONOS Tier-0 projects (250,000+ node hours) 5
- Cooling Cooling design stated by the operator or supplier.
- Lake Lugano water drawn from 45 m depth at 6 C, pumped 2.8 km to the centre; internal loop delivers 8-9 C water 8
- Power design Facility power, energy supply or heat reuse as stated by the operator. Not the benchmark power in the Power column.
- Lake-water circuit sized to cool up to 14 MW plus 7 MW on a second circuit; warmed water offered to Lugano's utility for reuse 8
- Facility Building, data centre or campus that houses the system, as described by the operator.
- CSCS data centre, Via Trevano 131, Lugano, with extensions at EPFL Lausanne, PSI Villigen and ECMWF Bologna 4
- Production start Month the operator says the system entered production.
- 2024-09 4
Benchmark and hardware
Source per value- Rank Position in the TOP500 edition named in the Edition column. Historic systems keep the rank of the edition where they last appeared.
- 10 1
- Rmax PFLOP/s Measured double-precision LINPACK (HPL) performance of the listed configuration. Older TFLOP/s and GFLOP/s figures are converted to PFLOP/s.
- 434.9 1
- Rpeak PFLOP/s Theoretical peak double-precision performance of the listed configuration. This is not AI or mixed-precision throughput.
- 574.84 1
- HPL efficiency % Rmax divided by Rpeak: the share of theoretical peak the system delivered on LINPACK. Computed from the two sourced figures.
- 75.7 1
- Power kW Power reported for the benchmark run. Measurement boundaries vary by site; this is not facility power, TDP or cooling capacity. Empty when the system does not report it.
- 7,124 1
- Efficiency GFLOP/s per W Rmax per watt of reported benchmark power, computed from the two sourced figures (GFLOP/s per W). Empty when power is not reported.
- 61.05 1
- Site Host or operator named by TOP500 for the installation.
- Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) 1
- Country Country or region reported by TOP500 for the site.
- Switzerland 1
- City Site city as reported by TOP500 or the operator. It can be the operator address rather than the machine room.
- Lugano 3
- Region World region of the installation country (grouping applied by this site).
- Europe 1
- Vendor Manufacturer or system supplier exactly as submitted to TOP500.
- HPE 1
- Vendor group Supplier grouped for filtering. Bull is the Eviden/Atos line; Other covers single-system suppliers.
- HPE 1
- System model Hardware platform in the cited TOP500 edition.
- HPE Cray EX254n 1
- Processor CPU description in the cited TOP500 edition; clock and core count refer to the processor model.
- NVIDIA Grace 72C 3.1GHz 1
- Accelerator Accelerator model listed for the system. Empty when TOP500 lists none.
- NVIDIA GH200 Superchip 1
- Accelerator vendor Maker of the accelerator. None listed means TOP500 names no accelerator for the system.
- NVIDIA 1
- Interconnect Network fabric exactly as listed in the cited TOP500 edition.
- Slingshot-11 1
- Fabric Interconnect family derived from the listed interconnect (grouping applied by this site).
- Slingshot 1
- Cores cores Total cores submitted to TOP500, including accelerator cores where TOP500 counts them. Not a CPU-only count and not a CUDA-core count.
- 2,121,600 1
- Installed Installation year reported in the TOP500 system record. Not necessarily the year of production acceptance.
- 2024 2
- Edition TOP500 edition (YYYY-MM) that supplies the ranking and benchmark data. A historic edition does not assert current operating status.
- 2026-06 1
- OS Operating system from the TOP500 system record.
- HPE Cray OS 2
- TOP500 record Link to the TOP500 database record for this exact submission.
- https://www.top500.org/system/180259/ 2
- Module bandwidth Gb/s Network bandwidth per module or GPU, as stated by the operator.
- 200 4
Sources
- TOP500 list, June 2026 accessed 2026-11-11
- TOP500 system record accessed 2026-11-11
- TOP500 site record accessed 2026-11-11
- cscs.ch (operator page) accessed 2026-11-11
- Production Projects | CSCS accessed 2026-11-11
- Small Projects | CSCS accessed 2026-11-11
- CHRONOS Tier-0 Projects | CSCS accessed 2026-11-11
- Fact sheet: Lake water to cool supercomputers accessed 2026-11-11