Science & Technology
Science and Technology
Science and Technology 
Tue, June 9, 2009
Mon, June 8, 2009
Sun, June 7, 2009
Fri, June 5, 2009
Cray Inc.: Swiss National Supercomputing Centre Upgrades Its Cray Supercomputer to Boost Scientific and Industrial Research
SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwire - June 5, 2009) - Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (
This is the latest in a series of upgrades for the Cray system at CSCS since the Lugano, Switzerland-based research facility installed Europe's first Cray XT3 supercomputer in 2005. CSCS is leveraging the petaflops (quadrillions of calculations per second) computing architecture of the Cray XT5 supercomputer to provide the Swiss scientific and industrial community with computing resources necessary to stay competitive on an international level.
The Cray XT5 system features more than 14,000 AMD Opteron™ cores for performance in excess of 140 teraflops and is accessed by CSCS users working in fields as diverse as chemistry, physics, material sciences, climatology, geology, biology, genetics, experimental medicine, astronomy, mathematics and computer sciences. The Cray XT5 supercomputer at CSCS also features Cray's innovative ECOphlex™ cooling technology designed to remove the heat generated by the system's processors without using air handlers, thus saving a significant amount of energy.
The current upgrade is part of a series of immediate steps taken in Switzerland toward sustained petaflops scale computing in science and engineering, and part of an initiative in HPC and Networking (HPCN) that the Federal Council of Switzerland intends to implement. The network of this initiative consists of substantial new investments in application development teams for high-performance and high-productivity computing (HP2C) at Swiss universities that will be supported by CSCS and the new Institute for Computational Science at the University of Lugano.
"We are very excited about the opportunities to push simulation-based sciences to their limits with the concomitant development of the center's hardware and the HP2C platform, and we are grateful to the Swiss University Conference, the ETH Domain, and the Swiss economy package 2009 for providing the financial resources to jumpstart the HPCN initiative in a timely manner," says Thomas Schulthess, director of CSCS and Professor for Computational Physics at ETH Zurich. Thomas recently moved to ETH from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he was involved in leadership computing projects -- a team he lead won the 2009 Gordon Bell Prize for running the first real scientific application that sustained more than a petaflops on a general purpose supercomputer, a Cray XT5 system nicknamed "Jaguar."
"We are very excited to continue and expand our successful relationship with CSCS, and to be a part of so many breakthrough results in scientific research utilizing the computational power of Cray supercomputers," said Ulla Thiel, vice president of Cray Europe. "CSCS is once again taking the lead in moving to the forefront of technology and further advancing Switzerland's prominent position in the worldwide scientific research community. We are honored that Cray can play such an important role in this effort."
About CSCS
Founded in 1991 CSCS, the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, develops and promotes technical and scientific services for the Swiss research community in the fields of high-performance and high-throughput computing. CSCS pioneers new information technologies; collaborates with domestic and foreign researchers, and carries out its own research in scientific computing. CSCS is located close to Lugano, Switzerland, and is an autonomous unit of the ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich). For more information, visit: [ http://www.cscs.ch/ ].
About the Cray XT5 Supercomputer
As the world's most scalable Linux supercomputer, the Cray XT5 system combines unprecedented sustained application performance with exceptional manageability and reliability, and lower cost of ownership for customers. Using powerful AMD Opteron processors, the Cray XT5 system supports both Cray XT4™ blades for optimized compute-to-communications balance and Cray XT5 blades optimized for memory-intensive and/or compute-biased workloads. Following the established success of the Cray XT™ product line, the Cray XT5 system introduces ECOphlex technology, packaging and design features that promote energy savings along two dimensions: by enabling greater system density and by reducing the need for expensive air cooling and air conditioners. The system's Cray Linux Environment™ enables optimized performance across a broader range of applications.
About Cray Inc.
As a global leader in supercomputing, Cray provides highly advanced supercomputers and world-class services and support to government, industry and academia. Cray technology enables scientists and engineers to achieve remarkable breakthroughs by accelerating performance, improving efficiency and extending the capabilities of their most demanding applications. Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing vision will result in innovative next-generation products that integrate diverse processing technologies into a unified architecture, allowing customers to surpass today's limitations and meeting the market's continued demand for realized performance. Go to [ www.cray.com ] for more information.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements. There are certain factors that could cause Cray's execution to differ materially from those anticipated by the statements above, including the technical challenges of developing high performance computing systems; significant reliance on third-party development service and parts suppliers, including their competitiveness with other suppliers and potential delays in the results of their development and in the availability of qualified parts from suppliers; Cray's ability to keep up with rapid technological change; and general economic and market conditions. For a discussion of these and other risks, see "Risk Factors" in Cray's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC.
Cray is a registered trademark, and Cray XT3, Cray XT5, ECOphlex, Cray XT4, Cray XT and Cray Linux Environment and are trademarks of Cray Inc. Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.