CRAY INC. TO OFFER MPP PRODUCT BASED ON 'RED STORM' SUPERCOMPUTER
Due Out In 2004, Product Targets Need for Higher Bandwidth, More Cost-Effective Microprocessor-based Linux Systems
SEATTLE (October 27, 2003) - Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (Nasdaq NM: CRAY) today announced plans to create a product line based on the "Red Storm" 40-TeraOp (40 trillion calculations per second) supercomputer it is developing for Sandia National Laboratories.
The product, due out in 2004, targets the need for highly scalable microprocessor-based Linux supercomputers with high bandwidth. The Cray product is designed to be more efficient and cost-effective for challenging problems and workloads than clustered SMP systems ("clusters") available in the marketplace, according to company officials.
"Superior efficiency and cost-effectiveness are major benefits of an advanced MPP (massively parallel processing) computer architecture like Red Storm, or the successful Cray T3E™ and ASCI Red systems on which Red Storm is modeled," said Peter Ungaro, Cray vice president, worldwide sales and marketing. "Even in very large systems with thousands of processors, this new MPP product is designed to function as a single high-efficiency computer, balanced with massive bandwidth to exploit its high-speed processors."
"Red Storm is architected from the ground up for superior reliability and ease-of-administration," he said. "It provides redundancy features and powerful capabilities for system-wide management, including resiliency and repair in the event of disk or processor failures. This creates the basis for better scientific productivity and progress." Clusters loosely link together multiple servers or PCs with relatively low-bandwidth connections that are inadequate to make efficient use of the processors. "Clustered SMP systems with commercial interconnects are fine for handling small problems or big problems that are simple in nature, but their efficiency can drop to less than five percent on really challenging problems and workloads, versus five to ten times better than that for a well-designed MPP system like Red Storm," Ungaro said. "For challenging work, MPP systems are far more cost-effective."
"We expect to get substantially more real work done, at a lower overall cost, on a highly balanced system like Red Storm than on a large-scale cluster," said Sandia's Bill Camp, Director of Computers, Computation, Information and Mathematics.
Cray's product will use the Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Opteron™ processors connected via a low-latency, high-bandwidth, three-dimensional interconnect network based on HyperTransport™ technology. Information on configurations, pricing and other details will be disclosed at the time of the formal product announcement.
Ungaro said he expects initial customers will have requirements similar in complexity to Sandia's and will typically want versions of Sandia's Red Storm supercomputer in varying sizes. "We are evaluating market requirements for the next set of customers beyond that. We believe this product will substantially expand our addressable market."
According to Cray President and CEO Jim Rottsolk, the decision to productize Red Storm was driven by customer interest. "Our partnership with the Department of Energy and Sandia National Laboratories on building the Red Storm system has allowed us to leverage that development for the entire supercomputing marketplace."
"The Red Storm product plan reflects Cray's strategy to deliver high-efficiency, high bandwidth supercomputer systems. The new product will embody the same MPP design philosophy as our successful Cray X1™ scalable vector-based product in a highly cost-effective superscalar architecture and will be a key initiative for Cray," Rottsolk said. "With the Cray X1 and Red Storm products, Cray is demonstrating its comprehensive capabilities in the high-performance scientific and technical marketplace."
About Cray Inc.
Cray's mission is to be the premier provider of supercomputing solutions for its customers' most challenging scientific and engineering problems. Go to http://www.cray.com for more information about the company.
About Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, CA., Sandia has major research and development responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness. The original development contract for the Red Storm supercomputer is funded by the Advanced Strategic Computing (ASCI) program at DOE's National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA), and is critical to providing supercomputer platforms for 3D, full-physics simulations in support of the US nuclear weapons stockpile.
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, completion of the Red Storm project on time and on budget, government support of supercomputer systems research and purchases, reliance on third-party suppliers, our ability to keep up with rapid technological change and our ability to compete against larger, more established companies and innovative competitors. 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.
Cray is a registered trademark, and Cray X1 and Cray T3E are trademarks, of Cray Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Press Release: Cray Inc. To Offer Mpp Product
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Apoptosis
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Press Release: Cray Inc. To Offer Mpp Product
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Immortal
You guys heard of Quantumn computers?
As you know in a normal computer a bit is either an 1 or a 0, and can ONLY be 1 at any given time. BUT in a Quantumn computer a bit can be both 1 AND 0 at the same time.
Now this means if you line up lots and lots of bits in paraellel, you can get such speeds that even if all other PC's in the world would be put together, it wouldnt reach it. The only problem is it is very hard to keep the bits in parallel at this state because even a slight outside interference (like a stray electron) could cause 1 bit to come out of parralellity and the whole thing would fail....
Hopefully they are gonna have a working prototype within the next decade or so.... seems very interesting!
As you know in a normal computer a bit is either an 1 or a 0, and can ONLY be 1 at any given time. BUT in a Quantumn computer a bit can be both 1 AND 0 at the same time.
Now this means if you line up lots and lots of bits in paraellel, you can get such speeds that even if all other PC's in the world would be put together, it wouldnt reach it. The only problem is it is very hard to keep the bits in parallel at this state because even a slight outside interference (like a stray electron) could cause 1 bit to come out of parralellity and the whole thing would fail....
Hopefully they are gonna have a working prototype within the next decade or so.... seems very interesting!