Maker of Fastest Supercomputers Cray Launches Latest System

Cray , the company that makes some of fastest supercomputers in the world, has launched its next-generation XC40 supercomputer and the Cray CS400 cluster supercomputer, featuring Cray DataWarp technology and Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors.

New capabilities and support for future processors and accelerators build on its successful XC line of supercomputers, which has helped Cray reach new markets. Cray supercomputer systems power 51 of the latest Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, including three in the top 10.

Built for driving down cost on I/O-intensive applications Cray's new DataWarp technology is described by the company an applications I/O accelerator that delivers a balanced and cohesive end-to-end system architecture from compute to storage. It adds a new tier of high performance flash SSD directly connected to the Cray XC40 compute nodes.

In addition to the latest Xeon processors, the XC40 and CS400 systems will have the option to come equipped with Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors and NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators. Cray recently launched an extreme GPU-dense system called CS-Storm, making it possible to pack 176 NVIDIA Tesla K40 GPU accelerators in 22 servers.

Like the CS300 series, the CS400 series are industry standard building blocks servers built into an integrated system, available as air- or liquid-cooled architectures. The systems also feature Cray's Aries interconnect and Dragonfly network topology.

A new Cray XC40 will be deployed for the recently signed contract with the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). Cray also sold a new system to the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in the summer.

Cray also announced that it has been awarded a $26 million contract with the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program. The company will deploy a XC40 supercomputer and a 4-petabyte Sonexion storage system at the HPCMP's DoD Supercomputing Resource Center (DSRC) located at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL).

Cray said the new system will help the HPCMP run complex simulations that deliver scientific discoveries, technological advances and analyses that provide soldiers with the capabilities to execute full-spectrum operations.