The InsideTrack: Cray's CX1 partner unmasked

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The InsideTrack loves to read email from readers, especially when said email contains information like this.

When I interviewed Cray, Inc. for the HPCwire feature piece on their recently announced CX1, I asked who they were partnering with on the manufacture. I asked, but didn’t expect an answer, because companies rarely answer such questions. And understandably so.

But the InsideTrack is ever curious, and evidently it’s not the only one. An insideHPC reader was noodling around on Google the other day on an unrelated hunt for information, and stumbled upon this URL: cray.vxtech.com. Following that link takes you to the web configurator for the CX1, complete with shopping cart and all. The  configurator works well, and covers all the bases, including optional support and a shipping case.

Their house brand product line includes small supercomputers, so they have some experience in the area. The vxtech.com-hosted configurator matches the one on Cray’s site page for page.

Who is VXTech you ask? They are a division of CIARATECH, a Canadian company owned by the Hypertec Group. According to the company’s marketing collateral

VXTECH designs, develops, markets, services, and supports a variety of server systems including NEXXUS4000® Personal Cluster, the acclaimed VXRACK® high density blade server, FUSION1200® SMP Server powered by ScaleMP™, VXR-3DT® Supercomputer Architecture, VXPRO® rack-mount/tower servers, VXSTOR® networked storage and GRAPHIXX® high-end workstations.
The company’s state of the art products are based on the Intel IA32 and IA64 architectures and utilize Linux and Microsoft operating systems.

The existence of all this Cray branding and product information on VXTech’s site implies that either: VXTech is Cray’s CX1 partner, or they were in the running at one time and got really aggressive building an incredibly convincing mockup for their proposal to Cray which they haven’t taken down yet. The latter seems like a worse business practice than letting the CX1 configurator sit out on the web unprotected, so my vote is that VXTech is Cray’s CX1 partner.