Science & Technology
Science and TechnologyScience and Technology 
Fri, February 18, 2011
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre Orders First Next-Generation Cray XMT Supercomputer
SEATTLE, WA and MANNO, SWITZERLAND--(Marketwire - February 18, 2011) - Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (
CSCS, which is currently home to a Cray XT5 supercomputer nicknamed "Rosa" and was also the recipient of the first-ever Cray XE6 system, will use its next-generation Cray XMT supercomputer for solving problems that require large-scale data analysis. The massively multithreaded system will be part of a new project at CSCS called EUREKA, which will provide Swiss scientists with dedicated resources for large-scale data analysis services. The proposed facility will be used for large-scale analysis of unstructured data and data mining, and is designed for parallel applications that are dynamically changing, require random access to shared memory and typically do not run well on conventional systems.
"The next generation of the Cray XMT supercomputer is purpose-built for performing real-time analysis of web-scale data," said Shoaib Mufti, director of knowledge management in Cray's Custom Engineering group. "The system is ideal for analyzing dynamically changing data with complex relationships between time, space, events and communities, and excels at analytics tasks including pattern matching, scenario development, behavioral prediction, anomaly identification and graph analysis. The match between the needs of CSCS users and the strengths of the next-generation Cray XMT is an excellent fit, and we are very pleased that CSCS has signed the first contract for our new system."
Dominik Ulmer, General Manager at CSCS, said, "Many researchers are faced with massive volumes of data through experiments, observations and simulations on a vast array of scientific applications such as material sciences, medicine genomics, high-energy physics, climate research and astrophysics. The next-generation Cray XMT will enable our scientists to perform data analysis applications that differ significantly from the current high performance computing workloads in that the data structures are often irregular (based on strings, trees, graphs and networks) without the high degree of spatial and temporal locality seen in physics-based simulations using regular matrices."
Introduced in 2006, the Cray XMT supercomputer features a massive, multithreaded processing architecture designed for large data-driven problems that exist in unrelated and diverse data sets. Each processor in the Cray XMT system can handle up to 128 concurrent threads. The system is architected to scale from 16 processors up to multiple thousands of processors that can operate on multiple terabytes of shared physical memory.
In 2011, Cray plans to launch the next-generation of the Cray XMT supercomputer, and CSCS is expected to receive its system later this year.
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.
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 computing. CSCS enables world-class scientific research by pioneering, operating and supporting leading-edge supercomputing technologies. The centre collaborates with domestic and foreign researchers, and carries out its own research in scientific computing. Located at Manno near Lugano, in the southern, Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, CSCS is an autonomous unit of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich).
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 begin commercial deliveries of the next-generation of the Cray XMT when expected and Cray's ability to deliver the system required for the CSCS procurement later this year and that meets CSCS's needs. 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 the system delivered to CSCS does not perform as expected and such other risks as identified in the Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 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 XMT, Cray XT5 and Cray XE6 are trademarks of Cray Inc. Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.