Science & Technology
Science and Technology
Science and Technology
Tue, May 25, 2010 Cray Launches the Cray XE6 Supercomputer - The Next Generation of Its High-End Supercomputers
SEATTLE, WA and EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND--(Marketwire - May 25, 2010) - At the annual gathering of Cray users from across the world, global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (
"Today's unveiling of the Cray XE6 supercomputer marks a significant milestone for the company, as we launch an entirely new high performance computing system built on years of innovation and hard work by Cray employees company-wide," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "This is an exciting day for the company and for our customers around the world who have been eagerly awaiting the new Cray XE6 supercomputer -- a system capable of scaling to more than a million processing cores. We are proud to have already secured more than $200 million in contracts for this system and are even more excited about our opportunity to give researchers, scientists and engineers around the world a next-generation tool for solving next-generation problems."
A number of leading HPC centers worldwide have signed contracts with Cray to purchase Cray XE6 supercomputers, formerly code-named "Baker." These centers include the Korea Meteorological Administration and the United States Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). Cray also won a contract to provide three Cray XE6 supercomputers to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center and the U.S Army Engineer Research and Development Center as part of the Department of Defense's High Performance Computing Modernization Program. Additional Cray XE6 supercomputer customers include the National Nuclear Security Administration (in a joint partnership with Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which is the managing agent for the High-End Computing Terascale Resource (HECToR) project located at Scotland's University of Edinburgh, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through a partnership with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
"At NERSC, we serve a diverse scientific workload and a large user base that includes more than 3,000 scientists and engineers performing a wide array of unclassified research," said Kathy Yelick, Director of NERSC at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Our center needed a supercomputing system that is energy efficient and delivers outstanding performance on real-world applications, and the Cray XE6 system meets our requirements. We're looking forward to making a petascale system using Cray's latest technology available to our broad user community as they tackle some of the most critical problems facing society today, such as cleaner energy and climate change."
At the heart of the Cray XE6 supercomputer is the new Gemini interconnect, which is designed to fundamentally change and significantly improve how Cray supercomputers move data across the system. Designed to support multi-core processors with a 100-fold improvement in messaging rates and a three-fold reduction in latency, the Gemini interconnect also includes hardware support for a global user address space. The Gemini interconnect is in part made possible by Cray's participation in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's High Productivity Computing Systems program.
Fully upgradeable from a Cray XT5 and Cray XT6 system, the Cray XE6 supercomputer features additional enhancements such as an improved network resiliency, a mature scalable software ecosystem and the third version of the Cray Linux Environment, which was announced in April 2010. This collection of industry-leading features provides Cray XE6 users with a supercomputing system that combines true scalable performance with production reliability. The Cray XE6 supercomputer is expected to be available early in the third quarter of 2010 (as previously disclosed).
"With the new Gemini interconnect, we are putting the final piece of the puzzle in place," said Barry Bolding, Cray's vice president of scalable systems. "We provide a 'green,' flexible and datacenter-friendly infrastructure featuring our optional ECOphlex cooling technology; we provide an adaptive software environment with the latest version of our Cray Linux Environment; and with the Gemini interconnect we will provide the scalable network to meet the demands of a petascale environment. The Cray XE6 system is the production supercomputer designed for the multi-core era."
"Cray's predecessor line of Cray XT supercomputers achieved significant success in the high performance computing market, and the Cray XE6 supercomputer is designed with a significant increase in capabilities," said Earl Joseph, IDC program vice president for HPC. "The Cray XT5 'Jaguar' system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was the first supercomputer to run a real-world scientific application at a sustained speed of more than one petaflops -- a feat that it has now accomplished on three separate real-world applications. The new Cray XE6 system is designed to push sustained petascale performance to an even broader range of real-world applications."
Additional information on the Cray XE6 supercomputer, including a white paper, brochure, technical details and a video can be found on the [ Cray XE6 supercomputer page ] on the Cray website.
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 its product development plans, including the timing of availability of the Cray XE6 system, the sales prospects of the Cray XE6 system and the ability of the Cray XE6 system and associated Gemini interconnect to perform as expected. 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 development efforts related to the Cray XE6 or to ship the Cray XE6 system within the planned timeframe or at all, the risk that Cray XE6 systems do not perform as expected or as required by customers, the risk that customer acceptances are not received when expected or at all, the risk that Cray will not be able to sell Cray XE6 systems as expected and such other risks as identified in the Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2010, 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. in the United States and other countries, and Cray XE6, Gemini, Baker and Cray XT5, Cray XT6, Cray Linux Environment and ECOphlex are trademarks of Cray Inc. Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
