Cray X1 Systems for the Army High Performance Computing Research Center Installed by Network Computing Services, Inc.

Business Editors, Technology Writers

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 31, 2002

Network Computing Services, Inc. (NCSI), located in Minneapolis, MN, has completed the installation and acceptance of two Cray X1(TM) supercomputer systems (Nasdaq:CRAY). NCSI is the Support Infrastructure contractor for the Army High Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC).

The systems will be used to support the activities of the AHPCRC and, through the Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), the larger defense science and technology community. The new CRAY X1 systems are installed in the NCSI Minneapolis Operations Center.

At the present time, five early-production Cray X1 systems are installed at customer sites. The Cray X1 is the first in a new generation of supercomputers from Cray Inc. and is expected to scale to tens of trillions of floating point operations per second with high-sustained performance. The two systems at the AHPCRC are the first Cray X1s available for unclassified use. The new Cray X1 product will be formally announced later this year.

"The Cray X1, with its low memory latency and high memory bandwidth, will allow AHPCRC, Army, and DoD researchers to address a set of key problems in computational mechanics, battlefield weather forecasting, and biological process modeling that are of great importance to the defense of the United States," said Paul Muzio, NCSI VP-Government Programs and AHPCRC Support Infrastructure Director. "We believe that the X1, with its high sustained performance, its quality interconnect network architecture, and vector processing capabilities, will be particularly valuable in supporting applications for modeling the effectiveness of new, advanced light weight armor and in predicting fine scale atmospheric effects. Both of these computational research areas are highly dependent on systems with exceptional performance on gather/scatter type operations and global processor to memory communications. We are looking forward to working with the research community in the use of these new systems."

Dr. Vipin Kumar, AHPCRC Research Director and Professor of Computer Science, University of Minnesota, added, "The Cray X1 will allow the AHPCRC researchers to continue leading edge research in the areas of computational structural and fluid dynamics, computational electromagnetics, design of materials, enabling technologies, as well as focus on new areas of great national importance such as modeling and simulation of chemical-biological effects and information assurance. In particular, the unique balanced architecture of Cray X1 (and its follow-ons) will allow the researchers to harness a much greater fraction of the peak performance than is possible with other contemporary parallel computers."

Dave Kiefer, VP for Product Development and Manufacturing, Cray Inc., noted the following: "The delivery and acceptance of these Cray X1 systems is an important milestone for Cray Inc. For the last few years, there has been an absence in the marketplace of high-bandwidth, high-efficiency supercomputer products to tackle the world's most consequential science and computing problems. The Cray X1 is designed to address that need. For a system like the Cray X1, efficiencies of 50 percent or more will not be uncommon. This is a considerable improvement over the high performance cluster computers in use today."

"The new Cray X1 product is creating excitement in the world of computational science and engineering," said Cray Chairman and CEO Jim Rottsolk. "Cray is seeing encouraging demand for the Cray X1 product from government, industry and academia. We expect the Cray X1 system to establish a new worldwide standard for supercomputing, exceeding even the impressive Earth Simulator in performance and efficiency."

"The Cray X1 was designed and is manufactured in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. We expect demand for this product and our other offerings to allow us to maintain and grow our presence in Wisconsin and Minnesota for many years to come," Rottsolk said.

Funding for the acquisition of the Cray X1 systems for the AHPCRC was included, through the efforts of Congressman Martin Olav Sabo, in the Federal Government's Fiscal Year 2002 DoD Appropriations Act. Congressman Sabo was also instrumental in sponsoring the original funding for the modernization of the DoD's technical computing systems in 1992. He has continued to strongly support the development of high end computing systems and the use of advanced computing technology in the DoD.

The development of the Cray X1 was funded in part by the Department of Defense, under a multi-year contract with Cray Inc. The objective of the development program was to design a system with exceptional memory bandwidth, interconnect performance, and vector-processing capabilities to meet the demanding sustained computational requirements of high-end computer users.

About the AHPCRC

The AHPCRC is a Government-University-Industry partnership committed to helping the U. S. Army and the nation maintain its defense technology lead and providing future generations of researchers with advanced training and research opportunities in science, engineering and the computational sciences. Funding for the AHPCRC is provided by the U.S. Army and the Army Research Laboratory (www.arl.army.mil) with funding for major equipment acquisition provided through the DoD HPCMP (www.hpcmo.hpc.mil). NCSI is the prime contractor for AHPCRC Support Infrastructure, Contract DASW01-01-C-0015. The University of Minnesota is the prime contractor for the AHPCRC Collaborative Agreement for Research whose partners include Clark Atlanta, Florida A&M, Howard, and Jackson State Universities, the University of North Dakota, and NCSI, Contract DAAD19-01-2-0014 (www.ahpcrc.org)

About NCSI

NCSI, as systems integrator and computing facilities manager for the AHPCRC, will operate the AHPCRC's Cray X1 systems. NCSI is a subsidiary of netASPx, Inc. (www.netaspx.com). netASPx is a leading, facilities-based applications services provider headquartered in Herndon, Virginia with its Operations Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. netASPx provides a broad spectrum of information services, including integrated business to business E-commerce applications, systems integration, applications management, network computing, and shared-computing services on some of the world's most powerful high-performance computer systems.