Science & Technology
Science and Technology
Science and Technology
Tue, June 23, 2009
Cray Inc.: Japan's Railway Technical Research Institute Puts Two Cray Supercomputers Into Production
SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwire - June 23, 2009) - Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (
Based in Tokyo, RTRI places great importance on the application of supercomputer-based simulation technology in its R&D efforts. With the goal of driving computing simulations in parallel environments, RTRI is now tapping into the technical expertise offered by Cray to set up a large-scale, efficient computing environment.
"We conducted a series of reviews aimed at selecting a system that would allow us to continue to use the application assets that we have been using to date, and these reviews confirmed that the Cray XT4 delivers superior performance," said Norimichi Kumagi, RTRI's executive director responsible for the information management division. "We intend to make the Cray XT4 our main system so we can effectively promote advanced simulations for railway R&D. We wish to make the best use of the system to conduct daily R&D activities by capitalizing on Cray's support."
The Cray products now operating at RTRI are a three-cabinet Cray XT4 supercomputer that serves as the institute's main system and a Cray CX1 deskside supercomputer that functions as the application server. This system delivers a combined peak performance of 10.8 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second), which is 16 times faster than the institute's previous system. The panels on the Cray XT4 feature a custom illustration evoking the promising future of railway technology. The illustration is rendered in purple, the color of RTRI's company logo.
"We are excited to see commercial customers such as RTRI leveraging the computational power of Cray XT systems in addition to our customers in the government and academic sectors," said Mamoru Nakano, president of Cray Japan. "Cray plans to actively assist RTRI in the area of programming to facilitate their computing simulations. In this way, we are sure they will be able to steadily promote program sharing, and as a result RTRI will further realize much faster and more precise simulations."
About the Cray XT™ Supercomputer Series
As the world's most scalable Linux supercomputer, the Cray XT™ product line combines unprecedented sustained application performance with exceptional manageability and reliability, and lower cost of ownership for customers. Using powerful AMD Opteron™ processors, the Cray XT line is optimized for memory-intensive and/or compute-biased workloads. The successful Cray XT product line features 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. Additionally, the Cray Linux Environment™ enables optimized performance across a broader range of applications.
About the Cray CX1 Supercomputer
The Cray CX1 product is an affordably-priced, deskside supercomputer. Easy to configure, deploy, administer and use, it is the "right size" in performance, functionality and cost for a wide range of users, from the single user who wants a personal supercomputer to a department of users as a shared clustered resource. Equipped with powerful Intel Xeon® processors and Windows® HPC Server 2008 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Clustercorp Rocks+ or Platform OCS, the Cray CX1 product offers performance leadership across a broad range of applications and standard benchmarks. For organizations wanting to harness HPC without the complexity of traditional clusters, the Cray CX1 supercomputer delivers the power of a high performance cluster with the ease-of-use and seamless integration of a workstation.
About RTRI
The RTRI is a unique and comprehensive railway research organization conducting various kinds of innovative research projects from fundamental to practical application stages in the wide range of the fields of rolling stock engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, information technology, materials sciences, environmental engineering and human sciences. The institute was established on December 10, 1986 to take over the R&D activities of the Japanese National Railways (JNR) just before the privatization and division of the JNR. The RTRI started its R&D activities with the inauguration of Japan Railway Companies (JR) on April 1, 1987 as one of the inheriting organizations of the JNR.
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.
Cray is a registered trademark, and Cray XT4, Cray CX1, Cray XT, ECOphlex and Cray Linux Environment are trademarks of Cray Inc. Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
