Cray Looks Ahead to Next Generation of Growth

By Nicole Hemsoth

July 7, 2014

It’s difficult to tell what kind of year lies ahead on the supercomputing systems sales side with so much riding on the upcoming release of key Intel products, particularly the new Knight’s Landing chips, among others in the future Xeon line. While the ecosystem might have been a bit more diverse a few years ago, when it comes to the downtime in advance of major architecture shifts, the mighty chipmaker is driving the train—and the rest of the cars aren’t moving until it puts the machine in gear.

This waiting game applies to several system vendors catering to HPC, including Bull, as we noted earlier While the big government-fed supercomputing and large-scale commercial HPC procurements for oil and gas companies might be reduced to a trickle for current generation systems, Cray too is expecting a boom in the coming years—one that can be heard far beyond the halls of supercomputing.

Even though the system vendors and large centers alike seem to be on hold waiting for a new rush of choices, some have already announced new machines to sport the future Intel products, including NERSC with its Cori supercomputer—one that will feature the next-generation Knight’s Landing cards with on-package memory. This Cray-built machine will be one of many we can expect coming in the new wave of procurements down the line, said Cray CEO, Pete Ungaro during a sit-down with us at ISC.

Part of what gives Ungaro comfort is that their entire business isn’t riding on the massive supercomputers that drove over 90% of their business in the past. He says that while they’re still a supercomputer company with unshakable roots in HPC, they’re seeing an unprecedented opportunity to push farther past that affiliation given the data-driven demands of enterprise users in markets that might never call what they do HPC—and which might not be, if applications are definitive. In the last two years they’ve bolstered their storage profile, added “big data” products to the mix, including a graph analytics appliance, and diversified the capabilities of their systems to span a wider area of enterprise workloads.

Last year at ISC he told us that around 10% of Cray’s business was commercial-this year, he expects that number to inch closer to the 20% mark, leaving them less dependent on the slings and arrows of product delays for supercomputing-specific processors (Knight’s Landing again the example) and more capable of filling any gaps with new outreach into enterprise.

The fact is, says Ungaro, more users across a wider swath of business aren’t getting what they need from vanilla commercial systems and they’re exploring options leverage some creative systems engineering to enable their work on both the data and computational horsepower fronts. In addition to focusing on their HPC bread-and-butter business, their targets in the coming year are around, you guessed it, big data via their storage and graph appliance product lines as well as striving toward “openness” via a few key moves through support of the OpenStack foundation, among other things.

While he agreed that Cray’s first quarter results don’t necessarily reflect the growth he described, he cautioned us to sit tight for some big announcements on both the procurements and product fronts this coming year. And besides, Cray, like many companies in the HPC systems business, isn’t one to be judged on a quarter-by-quarter basis since large procurements and other acts of funding can skew results, just as we’re seeing in recent times. After all, what major procurement cycle wouldn’t push farther out to wait for what’s coming when it promises more compute, efficient and I/O than what’s current available. While this makes sense, there aren’t any formal official dates for the launch of new Intel HPC products, although we’re pretty well aware this is later 2015, perhaps into 2016.

Even if the most recent numbers aren’t reflecting it, Cray is well positioned as a company with strong engineering, its interconnect and software ecosystems, and an increasingly diverse customer base. And of course, not everyone at the large-scale supercomputing level is sitting around waiting on the sparklier, newer things. There are plenty of users who have no need to wait for the next big thing from Intel. For instance, at ISC Cray announced a $54 million contract to provide the Korean Meteorological Administration two next-generation “Cascade” Cray XC systems coupled with their Sonexion storage. Most major weather forecasting centers buy pairs of systems, both because of the mission-critical nature of their operations as well as to test and run other applications in addition to the weather models. You might recall a discussion last year on this topic with Cray CEO Pete Ungaro and Isabella Weger from ECMWF—another major weather modeling and forecasting user of the Cascade systems.

They’ve sold other big systems this year, including an XC30 to the Hong Kong Santorium and Hospital for gene sequencing and life sciences research. Additionally, they’re seeing solid business on the storage front, evidenced by the adoption of the Cray Tiered Adaptive Storage (TAS) at the North German Supercomputing Alliance. With the growth on the storage side, coupled with the recent news that they’re hooking Lustre into TAS, they seem to be looking to continue the fine balance between big data storage and management needs with the HPC engineering bent they’re known for.

Notice that aside from the Cori system, these are Asian supercomputing deals, which adds light to Ungaro’s statement that they’re expanding their worldwide footprint with new centers around the globe. While we didn’t get a sense of when these would open, Europe and Asia are new targets—and places where they have key installations already at weather and research centers (and likely commercial operations they’re not allowed to discuss).

In other words, Cray and others should have big procurement news around Supercomputing and a new slew of them at next year’s ISC—and then things get interesting again. By mid-2016, into 2016, the hope is few options for processors will broaden and a new competitive (read as more interesting and diverse) ecosystem will emerge. OpenPower is promising. ARM is promising. AMD will probably do…something. NVIDIA with its IBM partnership and continued growth around CUDA and its own accelerators will continue to be a force. The ecosystem isn’t “on hold” since not everyone is waiting on the shiniest new toys, but it’s going to be quieter on the procurement side for a while—just as it has been SC last year.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire