Starting cost for the latest addition to the Cray CX1 line of deskside supercomputers is less than $12,000

SEATTLE, July 16 -- Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. today announced it has significantly reduced the entry-level pricing for its high performance computing (HPC) systems with the introduction of the company's newest product, the Cray CX1-LC deskside supercomputer. With a base price of less than $12,000, the Cray CX1-LC system will allow a larger segment of scientists and engineers to realize the benefits of Cray supercomputing, which can substantially improve scientific productivity and product development.

Available immediately, the Cray CX1-LC deskside supercomputer -- the "LC" stands for "Light Configuration" -- is designed to make using HPC systems easy and affordable for customers in a variety of situations, including:

• An engineering team looking for its first cluster.

The Cray CX1-LC system offers a state-of-the-art Cray cluster architecture at an affordable price, with familiar working environments such as Windows HPC Server 2008 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

• Scientists or engineers hitting the limits of workstation performance.

The Cray CX1-LC system pricing starts at levels similar to high-end workstations but provides far more performance, flexibility and headroom for growth. The Cray CX1-LC supercomputer can place the dual benefits of a high-end workstation and a small cluster at a user's desk.

• A software developer looking for a dedicated system for development and testing.

With a variety of available blades, the Cray CX1-LC deskside supercomputer allows customers to configure the system that best meets their needs.

• A simulation project that is just starting but needs room to grow.

The Cray CX1-LC system can easily be upgraded to a full Cray CX1 supercomputer and beyond.

"The original Cray CX1 system has proven to be a productive, powerful and easy-to-use HPC product for a growing number of researchers and scientists that have turned to Cray for their deskside supercomputing needs, and we expect the Cray CX1-LC will extend these benefits to an even larger number of HPC users," said Ian Miller, senior vice president of the productivity and solutions group and marketing at Cray. "We specifically designed the Cray CX1 system to eliminate the barriers to adoption of HPC systems, and with the Cray CX1-LC, we have now eliminated cost barriers as well."

Available with the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series and certified as an Intel Cluster Ready System, the Cray CX1-LC deskside supercomputer supports 1-4 compute blades, including visualization and GPGPU blades, in a simplified Cray CX1 chassis. As with the original Cray CX1 system, the Cray CX1-LC product can be configured with storage options that include solid-state drives (SSDs) or large capacity, fixed-drive storage blades.

The Cray CX1-LC system introduces two new compute blades that feature lower costs than the standard blades offered in the Cray CX1 system -- one supports only Gigabit Ethernet and is oriented to the workstation user, and the other offers DDR InfiniBand and is oriented to the small cluster user.

"HPC users are always looking for better ways to gain a competitive advantage, and having a powerful, easy-to-use, mini-supercomputer for under $15,000 will broaden the use of HPC to solve technical workloads. We expect that products like the Cray CX1-LC will help ignite growth at the lower end of the technical computing market," said Earl Joseph, IDC program vice president for HPC.

"The new Cray CX1-LC combines the strength of up to eight of our new Intel Xeon 5500 processors, I/O performance from the Intel X25-E Extreme SSD and the agility afforded by Intel Cluster Ready to accelerate the time to value equation," said Richard Dracott, Intel Corporation's General Manager of High Performance Computing. "Newly designed and priced for individuals and departmental workgroups, these platform technologies combine to deliver on what Cray describes as the 'ease of everything computing,' allowing users to apply HPC power to challenging science, engineering and design problems."

Introduced in September 2008, the successful Cray CX1 deskside supercomputer is designed from the ground up to provide superior performance, functionality and cost for individuals and departmental workgroups who want to harness HPC without the complexity of traditional clusters. Equipped with state-of-the-art visualization and storage capabilities, the Cray CX1 supercomputer delivers performance leadership across a broad range of applications, all in a compact, deskside system that plugs into a standard wall outlet.

About the Cray CX1 Supercomputer

The Cray CX1 product is an affordably-priced, deskside supercomputer. Easy to configure, deploy, administer and use, it is the "right size" in performance, functionality and cost for a wide range of users, from the single user who wants a personal supercomputer to a department wanting a shared clustered resource. Equipped with powerful Intel Xeon processors and Windows HPC Server 2008 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Clustercorp Rocks+ or Platform Cluster Manager, the Cray CX1 product offers performance leadership across a broad range of applications and standard benchmarks. For organizations wanting to harness HPC without the complexity of traditional clusters, the Cray CX1 supercomputer delivers the power of a high performance cluster with the ease-of-use and seamless integration of a workstation.

About Cray Inc.

As a global leader in supercomputing, Cray (Nasdaq GM: CRAY) provides highly advanced supercomputers and world-class services and support to government, industry and academia. Cray technology enables scientists and engineers to achieve remarkable breakthroughs by accelerating performance, improving efficiency and extending the capabilities of their most demanding applications. Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing vision will result in innovative next-generation products that integrate diverse processing technologies into a unified architecture, allowing customers to surpass today's limitations and meeting the market's continued demand for realized performance. Go to www.cray.com for more information.

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Source: Cray Inc.