Cray Selected for $40 Million Department of Defense Contract

The Cray XC-30 supercomputer (Photo: Cray)

Cray announced that it has been awarded two supercomputing contracts totaling more than $40 million to provide the Department of Defense (DOD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) with three Cray XC30 supercomputers and two Cray Sonexion storage systems. A Cray XC30 supercomputer and Sonexion storage system will be delivered to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Ohio, and two of each of those systems will be delivered to the Navy DOD Supercomputing Resource Center (Navy DSRC) located at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

"Supercomputing is a critical enabler for the wide variety of science, technology, test, evaluation, and acquisition engineering communities that the DOD HPC Modernization Program supports," said John West, director of the DOD's High Performance Computing (HPC) Modernization Program. "These new systems are a key component of our strategy of making sure the DOD's scientists and engineers have access to the most modern, capable, and usable computational tools available. We are especially pleased that the successful completion of this purchase marks the realization of the potential value of our streamlined process for large system acquisition, with benefits for both the government and our commercial partners."

6 Petabytes of Storage

Both the Air Force and Navy  selected the Cray Sonexion scale-out Lustre storage system - for a total of more than six petabytes of storage capacity and more than a third of a terabyte per-second of storage performance across both systems. Cray's Sonexion storage system combines Cray's Lustre expertise with a unique design that allows scalability from five gigabytes per-second to more than a terabyte per-second in a single file system. Management is simplified through an appliance design with all storage components including software, storage and infrastructure.

"The DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Program shares a number of the same attributes as our company -- both organizations are technology-driven, innovation-focused and committed to providing researchers and engineers with advanced supercomputing technologies for taking on important missions," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "Cray has a long, proud history with the HPCMP, and we are honored that our flagship Cray XC30 supercomputers and Sonexion storage systems will play a vital role in this important program."

The DOD HPCMP remains focused on its mission to accelerate technology development and transition into superior defense capabilities through the strategic application of high performance computing (HPC), networking and computational expertise. The HPCMP provides the people, expertise and technologies that increase the productivity of the DOD's Research, Development, Test and Evaluation community.