Science & Technology
Science and Technology
Science and Technology
Wed, December 2, 2009 
SEATTLE, WA and FRANKFURT, GERMANY--(Marketwire - December 2, 2009) - As part of a company-wide goal of reaching sustained exascale performance by the end of the next decade, global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (
As the first company to design and build a supercomputer that achieved sustained application performance of more than one petaflops (quadrillion mathematical calculations per second), Cray is committed to the research and development of new technologies necessary to achieve exaflops computing. The challenges are significant and will require research and development into power and cooling infrastructure, system and application resiliency, lightweight communication, efficient processor and network architectures, and new programming models.
"We are very excited to be partnering closely with the European HPC community in kicking off this important initiative for the company," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "Reaching and surpassing the petaflops barrier was an extraordinary achievement and these systems are providing unsurpassed supercomputing resources for meeting significant scientific challenges. We know there are scientific breakthroughs in important areas such as new energy sources and global climate change that are waiting for exascale performance, and we are working hard on building next-generation supercomputers that will be capable of it."
Initially, Cray will assemble a team of researchers located at EPCC, which is the supercomputing centre at The University of Edinburgh, and at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). Cray will closely collaborate with these centers along with its European software partners such as Allinea Software Ltd.
On Dec. 3, The University of Edinburgh will announce the creation of its Exascale Technology Centre at EPCC. Peter Ungaro will speak at the official launch of this centre, which will be a joint investment of Cray and the University of Edinburgh and which forms part of Cray's Exascale Research Initiative in Europe. The other initial partner within this Cray research initiative is CSCS. Cray will collaborate with CSCS in the framework of the HP2C project, which targets the development of future applications for very large scale simulations (see [ www.hp2c.org ]). Cray plans to launch new strategic alliances in the future to continually grow and expand this important research initiative.
"This new initiative is a significant demonstration of Cray's commitment to broaden our R&D efforts in Europe," said Ulla Thiel, vice president of Cray in Europe. "The path to exascale will involve a large partnership of companies, government institutions and academia in order to reach our real goal of applications running at the exaflop level."
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 is designed to enable 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 is focused on delivering 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 within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, including, but not limited to, statements related to Cray's ability to further exascale research and develop exascale technology. These statements involve current expectations, forecasts of future events and other statements that are not historical facts. Inaccurate assumptions and known and unknown risks and uncertainties can affect the accuracy of forward-looking statements and cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could affect actual future events or results include, but are not limited to, the risk that Cray is not able to successfully complete its planned product research and development efforts in a timely fashion or at all, the risk that Cray is not able to successfully launch new strategic alliances in a timely fashion or at all or that such alliances are not as successful as expected and such other risks as identified in the Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the period ended September 30, 2009, and from time to time in other reports filed by Cray with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. You should not rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this release. Cray undertakes no duty to publicly announce or report revisions to these statements as new information becomes available that may change the Company's expectations.
Cray is a registered trademark of Cray Inc.
