DoD Modernization Program to Acquire Cray XC40

Today Cray announced the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) has awarded the Company with a $26 million supercomputer contract for a Cray XC40 supercomputer and three Cray Sonexion storage systems.

Cray and Intel Double Down on Next-gen HPC Systems

Since 2008, the Intel and Cray have rapidly increased their collaboration to the benefit of the supercomputing market and customers. “Most recently, Cray has announced win after win for its Cray XC series systems that feature the Intel Xeon Phi processor, code-named Knights Landing and Knights Hill, which offers peak performance of over half-a-petaflop per cabinet—a 2X performance boost over previous generations. Cray is leading the charge toward many-core-CPU systems that boost application performance without the aid of GPUs.”

PGS Acquires Galois Supercomputer from Cray

“Today’s most advanced seismic survey datasets encompass many hundreds of terabytes, and gaining insight from this data lies squarely at the convergence of supercomputing and big data,” said Barry Bolding, chief strategy officer at Cray. “The Cray supercomputers allow PGS to quickly process this data into an accurate, clear image of what’s lying underneath the sea floor, through kilometers of varied geology. This is an extraordinarily complex computational challenge, and is where PGS excels. We’re thrilled PGS continues to rely on Cray supercomputers to power the next generation of seismic processing and imaging.”

Cray to Add Intel Xeon Phi to Archer Supercomputing Service in the UK

EPSRC and Cray have signed an agreement to add a Cray XC40 Development System with Intel Xeon Phi processors to ARCHER, the UK National Supercomputing Service. “The new Development system will have a very similar environment to the main ARCHER system, including Cray’s Aries interconnect, operating system and Cray tools, meaning that interested users will enjoy a straightforward transition.”

Supercomputers Power NOAA Flood Forecasting Tool

NOAA and its partners have developed a new forecasting tool to simulate how water moves throughout the nation’s rivers and streams, paving the way for the biggest improvement in flood forecasting the country has ever seen. Launched today and run on NOAA’s powerful new Cray XC40 supercomputer, the National Water Model uses data from more than 8,000 U.S. Geological Survey gauges to simulate conditions for 2.7 million locations in the contiguous United States. The model generates hourly forecasts for the entire river network. Previously, NOAA was only able to forecast streamflow for 4,000 locations every few hours.

Kyoto University Thinks Widening SIMD Will be Key to Performance Gains in New Intel Xeon Phi processor-based Cray System

“With an imminent switchover to a new Cray system with next-generation Intel Xeon Phi Processors (codenamed Knights Landing) planned for October, the ACCMS team at Kyoto University is eagerly looking forward to a potential two-fold application performance improvements from its new system. But the lab is also well aware that there is significant recoding work ahead before the promise of the new manycore technology can be realized.”

KAUST Empowers Researchers to Think Big

In this special guest feature, Jane Glasser writes that Saudi Arabia has moved into the global supercomputing top ten with Shaheen II, a 200,000-core behemoth that’s taming global warming, earthquakes, and more. “With 5.536 Pflops of sustained LINPACK performance, Shaheen II is the largest and most powerful supercomputer in the Middle East and the tenth fastest supercomputer in the world, according to the June 2016 TOP500 list.”

Cray Adds Intel Xeon Phi Processor to Flagship Line of Supercomputers

Today Cray introduced new performance breakthroughs that will provide customers with the fastest Cray XC supercomputers and Cray Sonexion storage systems to date. “Our customers are taking on increasingly complex computational problems that are expanding the boundaries of supercomputing and storage performance capabilities,” said Ryan Waite, Cray’s senior vice president of products. “We partner closely with our customers to understand their unique requirements and deliver new systems that deliver peak performance. For many of our customers, Intel Xeon Phi processors and Lustre parallel file systems are critical components of their supercomputing infrastructure. Our close collaboration with Intel helps to ensure our Intel Xeon Phi processor-based solutions scale to the most demanding performance requirements and our close partnership with Seagate helps scale Lustre to new levels of performance and stability.”

Time-lapse Video: Cray Install at UK Met Office

In this video, technicians install a new supercomputer at UK Met Office. The Met Office is the National Weather Service for the UK, providing internationally-renowned weather and climate science and services to support the public, government and businesses.

Saving East African Crops with Supercomputing

“Because the silverfly species are identical to look at, the best way to distinguish them is by examining their genetic difference, so we are deploying a mix of genomics, supercomputing, and evolutionary history. This knowledge will help African farmers and scientists distinguish between the harmless and the invasive ones, develop management strategies, and breed new whitefly-resistant strains of cassava. The computational challenge for our team is in processing the genomic data the sequencing machines produce.”