Cray announced this morning that the National Center for Energy and the Environment [NSCEE] has been testing the Cray CX1 deskside supercomputer running Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008. Overall, the CX1 running Windows ran 46% faster in delivering complex analyses. What does that really means? Your guess is as good as mine.
The results of the benchmarking sessions highlighted in this case study provide excellent, real-world examples of how the Cray CX1 is having a positive impact for organizations like NSCEE,” said Ian Miller, senior vice president of the productivity solutions group and marketing at Cray. “Today’s scientific challenges require a range of processing capabilities, and the Cray CX1 allows researchers and scientists to access HPC performance at the deskside at a price starting at $25,000. As this case study shows, many organizations can benefit from this high productivity computing solution.”
The results were recently released via a joint technical study between the Microsoft HPC Group and Cray. One of the more interesting things to note, was the mention of “ease of use.”
Ease of use. With a familiar Windows user interface paired with a supercomputing system that is small, quiet and purpose-built for the office environment, NSCEE scientists didn’t have to spend valuable research time learning a new HPC system.
For more info on the study and the results, read the full release here.