Cray Inc. Reports Order for 144-Processor Cray XD1 System from Alabama Supercomputer Authority.SEATTLE -- 634-Gigaflop Opteron/Linux Supercomputer "Promises to Provide Substantial Improvements in Computational Efficiency" over Clusters Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (Nasdaq:CRAY) today announced that it has received an order for a 12-chassis Cray XD1(TM) supercomputer system for the Alabama Supercomputer Authority (ASA Asa (ā`sə), in the Bible, king of Judah, son and successor of Abijah. He was a good king, zealous in his extirpation of idols. When Baasha of Israel took Ramah (a few miles N of Jerusalem), Asa bought the help of Benhadad of Damascus and ). Financial terms were not disclosed. After successful testing and evaluation of a three-chassis pre-production Cray XD1 system at ASA's Alabama Supercomputer Center, ASA approved implementation of the full system. Cray recently installed a 72-processor Cray XD1 system at the Alabama Supercomputer Center in Huntsville, AL. Later this year, the system will be expanded to a full cabinet of 144 AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, www.amd.com) A major manufacturer of semiconductor devices including x86-compatible CPUs, embedded processors, flash memories, programmable logic devices and networking chips. Opteron(TM) processors with 634 billion calculations per second (gigaflops (GIGA FLoating point OPerations per Second) One billion floating point operations per second. See FLOPS. (unit) gigaflops - (GFLOPS) One thousand million (10^9) floating point operations per second. ) of peak processing power. Each of these installations will represent the largest configurations of the Cray XD1 installed to date. Randy Fulmer, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of ASA, said that the Cray XD1 system "will provide a leading-edge resource to Alabama's academic community for the advancement of science and engineering research to meet national and state priorities. All education institutions in Alabama will have access to this new Cray XD1 system for collaborative research efforts." The acquisition of the Cray XD1 system is part of a collaborative agreement between the University of Alabama The University of Alabama (also known as Alabama, UA or colloquially as 'Bama) is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA. Founded in 1831, UA is the flagship campus of the University of Alabama System. and ASA. Dr. David Dixon, Ramsay Professor of Chemistry at the University of Alabama, said the new system initially will target research in computational chemistry and biology. "The high bandwidth and low latency of the Cray XD1 system's RapidArray(TM) interconnect promise to provide substantial improvements in computational efficiency over more traditional clustered and distributed HPC (Handheld PC) A palmtop computer that weighs less than one pound and runs specialized versions of popular applications. Microsoft coined the term for its Windows CE operating system, which is an abbreviated version of Windows. See Pocket PC. systems." "We are very excited to partner with ASA to help meet the needs of researchers across the state. The Cray XD1 is providing scientists and engineers with a platform designed from the ground up to meet their HPC challenges, which is an attractive alternative to buying a cluster assembled from general-purpose business servers," said Peter Ungaro, Cray's senior vice president of sales, marketing and services. "With the Cray XD1 supercomputer starting under $100,000, customers in many disciplines around the world are now turning to Cray for purpose-built solutions for scientific and engineering research." About the Cray XD1 Supercomputer The Cray XD1 supercomputer features the direct connect processor (DCP DCP - definitional constraint programming ) architecture, which removes PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). bottlenecks and memory contention to deliver superior sustained performance. The Cray XD1 has the lowest latency of any current HPC system, with MPI MPI - Message Passing Interface latency of 1.8 microseconds in measured tests conducted using the Ohio State MPI benchmark. The tests show that the Cray XD1 ships messages with four times lower MPI latency than common cluster interconnects such as Infiniband, Quadrics This is an article about the computing company, for use in mathematics, see quadric. Quadrics is a supercomputer company formed in 1996 as a joint venture between Alenia Spazio and the technical team from Meiko Scientific. or Myrinet, and 30 times lower than Gigabit Ethernet employed in lowest-cost clusters. The Cray XD1's interconnect delivers twice the throughput of Infiniband for messages up to 1 KB and 60 percent higher throughput for very large messages. The Linux/Opteron system runs x86 32/64-bit codes. Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are available to accelerate applications, and the Active Manager subsystem provides single system command and control and high availability features. A 3VU (5.25") chassis provides 12 compute processors, 58 peak gigaflops, 96 GB/second aggregate switching capacity, 1.8-microsecond MPI interprocessor latency, 84 GB maximum memory and 1.5 TB maximum disk storage. A 12-chassis rack provides 144 compute processors, up to 691 peak gigaflops, 1TB/second aggregate switching capacity, 2 microsecond One millionth of a second. See space/time and ohnosecond. (unit) microsecond - One millionth (10^-6) of a second. MPI interprocessor latency, 922 GB/second aggregate memory bandwidth, 1 TB maximum memory and 18 TB maximum disk storage. About The Alabama Supercomputer Authority The Alabama Supercomputer Authority (ASA) is a state-funded corporation founded in 1989 to operate the Alabama Supercomputer Center (ASC ASC Ambulatory surgery center, see there ) and the Alabama Research and Education Network (AREN AREN Alternative Religions Education Network AREN Australia's Research and Education Network ). The Alabama Supercomputer Authority provides Internet, Internet2, technology services, and high performance computing resources to Alabama's K12 schools, colleges, and universities. About Cray Inc. The world's leading supercomputer company, Cray Inc. pioneered high-performance computing with the introduction of the Cray-1 in 1976. The only company dedicated to meeting the specific needs of HPC users, Cray designs and manufactures supercomputers used by government, industry and academia worldwide for applications ranging from scientific research to product design, testing to manufacturing. Cray's diverse product portfolio delivers superior performance, scalability and reliability to the entire HPC market, from the high-end capability user to the department workgroup. For more information, go to www.cray.com. Safe Harbor Safe Harbor 1. A legal provision to reduce or eliminate liability as long as good faith is demonstrated. 2. A form of shark repellent implemented by a target company acquiring a business that is so poorly regulated that the target itself is less attractive. 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, reliance on third-party suppliers, the passing of acceptance tests, the successful porting of application programs to the Cray XD1 and general economic and market conditions. 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 XD1 is a trademark, of Cray Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
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