Cray Announces Big Wins at ISC 2016

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crayToday Cray announced that the company has been awarded new contracts for its Cray XC40 supercomputer, two Cray CS400 cluster supercomputers, a Cray Urika-GX agile analytics platform, and its DataWarp applications I/O accelerator to customers in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies (ACCMS) at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan awarded Cray a contract for a Cray XC40 supercomputer, featuring the Cray DataWarp applications I/O accelerator, and a Cray CS400 cluster supercomputer. The 5.4 petaflop Cray XC40 system at Kyoto University will also include the new Intel Xeon Phi processors, formerly codenamed “Knights Landing”.

The Centre for Modelling & Simulation (CFMS) in Bristol, United Kingdom – home of Cray’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) headquarters – recently purchased a Cray CS400 cluster supercomputer, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Laboratory awarded Cray a contract for the recently launched Cray Urika-GX system.

“The demand for Cray’s portfolio of supercomputing solutions is strong,” said Fred Kohout, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Cray. “As customers continue to look for capabilities and solutions to successfully leverage the rise of data-intensive computing, we are seeing increased traction for Cray’s supercomputing, storage, and analytics solutions. Particularly, the interest generated from the recent launch of our Cray Urika-GX system is significant, and we are pleased the agile analytics system will play a key role in Argonne’s data science program.”

The researchers and scientists at Kyoto University’s highly regarded ACCMS will use its new Cray systems to conduct research and development related to the advanced use of information technology infrastructure and information media. ACCMS has four research departments for networking, multimedia oriented educational computer systems, academic digital contents, and supercomputing. ACCMS will use its Cray XC40 supercomputer and Cray CS400 cluster supercomputer for applications that require scalability and high sustained performance, as well as applications that require large capacity for multiple jobs.

Our center is focused on advanced research and education, and we are pleased to be able to provide our researchers and scientists with the computational resources of the Cray XC40 and CS400 systems,” said Professor Hiroshi Nakashima, Chair of ACCMS’s Supercomputing Service Committee. “Our new Cray systems will be available to universities and research institutions across Japan, and will play an important role in several nationwide, joint research projects. Cray’s advanced supercomputing technologies will play an integral role in support of our mission.”

The Centre for Modelling & Simulation is currently installing the first-ever Cray supercomputer in the city of Bristol, where Cray opened its EMEA headquarters in June 2015. An independent, non-profit organization, CFMS was founded in 2007 out of a consortium of companies including Airbus, BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, MBDA, and Williams F1. With a vision to drive a practical revolution in engineering design capability, CFMS offers access to a collaborative facility with advanced simulation expertise, technologies, and tools that enable companies to incorporate these elements in their design processes. The Cray CS400 system will serve as the primary high performance computing system at CFMS.

With modelling and simulation at the core of product development, providing a technology platform that enables rapid innovation and supports the acceleration of engineering design capability is central to our vision,” said Sam Paice, Chief Operating Officer of CFMS. “It was paramount to select a technology partner like Cray, who is at the forefront of high performance computing, and with whom we can develop a collaborative partnership beyond the technology, and support our strategic vision.”

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility has purchased a new Cray Urika-GX system. The 32-node Cray Urika-GX agile analytics platform will be used to perform research in the areas of life science, material science, and machine learning. Combining supercomputing technologies with an open, enterprise-ready software framework for big data analytics, the Cray Urika-GX system will also be used in part by researchers at Argonne in support of the 2016 ALCF Data Science Program. The new initiative is targeted at big data science problems that require the scale and performance of leadership computing resources.

Argonne is committed to exploring and improving various computational methods that will help enable data-driven discoveries across all scientific disciplines,” said Rick Stevens, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences at Argonne National Laboratory. “As part of The 2016 ALCF Data Science Program, various leadership computing resources will give the program’s product teams the ability to parse and analyze massive data sets generated from an increasing number of data centric applications. The Cray Urika-GX system will be an important tool in our efforts.”

The Cray XC40 supercomputer and Cray CS400 cluster supercomputer at Kyoto University are expected to be delivered in the second half of 2016.

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