Cray Extends Scalable MPP Architecture; Introduces Industry's First Integrated Hybrid Supercomputer With Cray XT5(TM) Family

"The Cray XT5 family delivers superior sustained application performance from a single cabinet to massive scale while offering lower power consumption, industry-leading high density packaging, innovative cooling technologies and a fully upgradeable path from Cray XT3 and Cray XT4 systems," said president and CEO Peter Ungaro. "This new product family builds on the scalability of the Cray XT product line with the added productivity benefits of hybrid processing to deliver shorter times to solution and competitive advantages to our customers over a wider range of applications."

Cray XT5 Supercomputer

The Cray XT5 system is the world's most scalable Linux-based supercomputer. It combines unprecedented sustained application performance with exceptional manageability, lower cost of ownership and broad application and tools support to large supercomputer class machines. A number of prominent independent software vendors (ISVs) have pledged their support of the new system, including CD-adapco, Exa Corporation, Livermore Software Technology Corp. (LSTC), and Software Cradle.

In addition to supporting the current Cray XT4(TM) compute blades, a new eight-socket Cray XT5 compute blade supports the powerful dual-core and new Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processors. Each dual-socket node supports up to 32 gigabytes of locally addressable memory which can be accessed at up to 25.6 gigabytes per second. Using a next-generation Cray SeaStar2+(TM) interconnect, the entire system is designed to scale and avoid performance losses associated with communication bottlenecks, memory access delays and operating system jitter.

Recognizing the growing need to reduce energy usage and control operating costs, the Cray XT5 family employs innovative packaging and technologies that reduce power and cooling requirements. Vertical cooling takes cold air from the floor with a single, high-efficiency turbine fan and efficiently cools the processors on the Cray XT5 blades. The compute blades are designed for optimal airflow with position-dependent, custom-designed heat sinks. A single cabinet can support very high density CPU configurations of 192 processor sockets or 768 CPU cores.

Easily upgradeable and expandable, existing customers can upgrade to the Cray XT5 system from the Cray XT3(TM) or Cray XT4 systems and/or add on to their existing Cray XT systems, thereby leveraging their investment over a longer life. Cray XT5 cabinets can be configured with Cray XT4 compute blades, for optimized compute-to-communication balance, or with the new high density Cray XT5 compute blades, for memory-intensive and/or compute-biased workloads. Additionally, the Linux operating environment in the Cray XT5 system enables optimal performance across a broader range of applications.

Cray XT5h Hybrid Supercomputer

Recognizing that no single architecture is ideally suited for all types of applications, Cray has developed the industry's first integrated hybrid supercomputer, the Cray XT5h system. With the Cray XT5 system as its foundation, the Cray XT5h supercomputer integrates multiple processor architectures with a complete software development environment into a single system supporting diverse workflows. The Cray XT5h system couples industry-leading scalar processing capability with high memory-bandwidth vector processing and reconfigurable co-processing using field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology, establishing a new paradigm in high performance computing (HPC).

"The stalling out of standard microprocessor speeds is starting to spark a rebirth in the HPC industry toward computers that augment microprocessors with other processor types including vector processors, GPUs, accelerators and FPGAs," said Earl Joseph, IDC program vice president, Technical Computing Systems. "Cray is developing new computer architectures to address this growing requirement with its new hybrid supercomputer. Cray has a long history and experience using multiple processors in its supercomputers including vector processors, custom I/O processors, industry standard microprocessors, multithreaded processors and FPGAs which will add value and capability to their new hybrid designs."

Supporting a variety of processing technologies, the Cray XT5h system integrates its Opteron support with a vector system and FPGAs.

--  Vector and Large Memory Processing
    The vector compute blades for the Cray XT5h supercomputer -- called
    Cray X2(TM) blades, provide breakthrough high bandwidth vector processing
    capabilities.  A Cray X2 compute node is the core building block of the
    system.  It has four vector CPUs implemented as a four-way SMP.  With
    64 gigabytes of shared memory, each Cray X2 node is capable of more
    than 100 gigaflops of peak performance and systems can be scaled to
    1,024 processors with 16 terabytes of globally addressable memory.  The
    Cray X2 vector processor of the Cray XT5h system has unique global
    addressing capabilities programmable by Co-Array Fortran and Unified
    Parallel C (UPC), which can solve problems beyond the capabilities of
    MPI.

--  FPGA
    A Cray XR1(TM) reconfigurable computing blade consists of two pairs of DRC
    Computer Reconfigurable Processor Units (RPUs) tightly coupled with two
    AMD Opteron(TM) processors.  A HyperTransport(TM) interconnect links general-
    purpose and reconfigurable processors instead of the much slower PCI-
    based interconnect commonly employed in many reconfigurable solutions.
    This tight coupling of reconfigurable processors with AMD Opteron
    processors ensures low latency and high bandwidth communication between
    processing elements, allowing users to scale applications to thousands
    of reconfigurable processors.

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 plans to differ materially from those anticipated by the statements above. These include the technical challenges of developing high performance computing systems, including potential delays in hardware and software development projects; reliance on third-party suppliers, including delays in availability of qualified parts from suppliers; Cray's ability to scale systems to targeted levels of performance; timing and level of government support of supercomputer systems purchases and research and development; timing of and successful porting of application programs to new computing systems; Cray's ability to keep up with rapid technological change; and the passing of acceptance tests. For a discussion of these and other risks, see "Factors That Could Affect Future Results" in Cray's most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC.

Cray is a registered trademark, and Cray XT5, Cray XT, Cray XT5h, Cray XT3, Cray XT4, Cray SeaStar2+, Cray X2 and Cray XR1 are trademarks of Cray Inc. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. HyperTransport is a licensed trademark of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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SOURCE: Cray Inc.