CLUSTERATLAS
A field guide to supercomputing

Isambard-AI phase 2

University of Bristol

CPU Accelerator Interconnect
i
Reading this map

Isambard-AI phase 2 node architecture

Isambard-AI phase 2 is operated by University of Bristol in United Kingdom. This profile covers Ranked system / partition. Specifications are listed below; anything the operator has not published is itemised in the documented-fields list.

Published benchmark (TOP500 · June 2026)

HPL rank
#13
HPL Rmax
216.5 PFlop/s
Theoretical peak Rpeak
278.58 PFlop/s
Ranked core count
1,028,160

Cluster · GH200 compute

Operator / site
University of Bristol
Country
United Kingdom
Profile scope
Ranked system / partition
Data checked
14 September 2026
Manufacturer
HPE
Ranked core count
1028160
Theoretical peak (PFlop/s)
278.58
Operating system
HPE Cray OS

GH200 compute

Items marked ▧ come from the documented NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip platform specification.

System / node model
HPE Cray EX254n
Compute nodes of this type
1320
CPU model
NVIDIA Grace · 72 cores
CPU sockets per node
4
Cores per socket
72
Physical CPU cores
288
CPU note
Each GH200 is power-capped at 660 W, shared dynamically between the Grace CPU and the Hopper GPU.
Accelerator model
NVIDIA Hopper (GH200)
Physical accelerators per node
4
Host / unified memory
480 GB LPDDR5X · 460 GB usable
Accelerator memory
96 GB per GPU
Accelerator ↔ accelerator link
NVLink
CPU ↔ accelerator link
NVIDIA NVLink-C2C · 800 Gbps per node
Network interfaces per node
4
Interface model
HPE Cray Cassini (Slingshot 11)
Interface speed
200 Gb/s per NIC
Interface-to-accelerator topology
Four Cassini NICs — a dedicated adapter per GH200 superchip
Local storage
None — on compute nodes the local scratch area is a tmpfs RAM disk with a 48 GiB quota, not a local disk

Scope and uncertainty

Figures are for Phase 2 alone. Bristol news articles quote 1,362 nodes and 5,448 superchips, which combine Phase 1 (42 nodes) with Phase 2 (1,320); those combined figures are not used here. Node specifications follow the documented NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip platform (Superchip module — nodes per system and per-node superchip counts are operator-specific); operator-specific deviations are not published.

Documented fields: 22 / 29

Every field this catalog checks. Fields listed above have a value; the remainder are shown here. A field marked absent is not publicly available in the sources we could verify, which does not mean the hardware is missing. Fields that cannot apply, such as benchmark results for an unranked system, are excluded from the total.

Cluster — 4 / 7

  • Manufacturer
  • Ranked core count
  • Theoretical peak (PFlop/s)
  • Measured power (kW)
  • Energy efficiency (GFlop/s per watt)
  • Operating system
  • Network topology

GH200 compute — 18 / 22

  • System / node model
  • Compute nodes of this type
  • CPU model
  • CPU sockets per node
  • Cores per socket
  • Physical CPU cores
  • CPU note
  • Accelerator model
  • Physical accelerators per node
  • Host / unified memory
  • Accelerator memory
  • Accelerator ↔ accelerator link
  • On-node fabric
  • CPU ↔ accelerator link
  • Network interfaces per node
  • Interface model
  • Interface speed
  • Interface-to-accelerator topology
  • Aggregate scale-out per node
  • GPUDirect RDMA
  • Management / storage networking
  • Local storage
  • NVMe data disks
  • Max remote data disks
  • Uncached disk IOPS
  • Uncached disk throughput (MBps)
  • Form factor

Sources

Browse all cluster architecture pages →

Data & sources