High-end Cray XT6 supercomputer and midrange Cray XT6m system will extend Cray's performance and productivity leadership on challenging applications

SEATTLE, and PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 16 -- At the 2009 Supercomputing Conference in Portland, Ore., global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. today announced the newest upgrades to the company's industry-leading Cray XT supercomputer series. The high-end Cray XT6 supercomputer system and its fully-compatible Cray XT6m midrange counterpart will combine Cray's unmatched scalability and architecture with AMD's (NYSE: AMD) newest innovations in processing for high performance computing (HPC). Scheduled for general availability in the second quarter of 2010, the Cray XT6 and Cray XT6m systems will continue to set the standard for HPC performance, productivity and energy efficiency.

"The Cray XT5 system was the world's first supercomputer to achieve sustained petascale performance on customer applications and has played a major role in a number of important scientific breakthroughs around the world," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "The new Cray XT6 product will continue to efficiently scale performance to the highest levels for our customers. Its new midrange counterpart, the Cray XT6m, is our second generation of supercomputer designed to effectively scale down our successful high-end solutions and provide the same benefits to a much broader set of scientists and engineers."

Designed to support the most challenging HPC workloads, the new Cray XT6 system combines unprecedented scalability with exceptional manageability, attractive cost of ownership and broad application support to produce the world's most productive general-purpose supercomputer. As with all Cray XT systems, the Cray XT6 supercomputer is upgradeable with future planned enhancements to hardware and software, and current Cray XT5 supercomputer customers can upgrade to the Cray XT6 system.

The Cray XT6m supercomputer embodies the same design philosophy by scaling down the industry-leading architecture of Cray's high-end supercomputer systems, preserving upgradeability and creating a cost-effective product with superior performance for the midrange segment of the HPC market. The Cray XT6m supercomputer is based on the same architecture and software used in Cray's largest supercomputing systems, but with an optimized network for system sizes ranging from 700 to 13,000 cores (or one to six cabinets).

To continue to reduce energy usage and lower the total cost of ownership for customers, both the Cray XT6 and Cray XT6m systems feature an enhanced flat-top design that further improves Cray's industry-leading ECOphlex liquid cooling technology.

"Both supercomputing systems feature AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors, the powerful and reliable Cray SeaStar interconnect, and Cray's entire software stack, which has been proven to the petascale performance level," said Barry Bolding, Cray's vice president of scalable systems. "Cray's innovation, combined with AMD's strong roadmap, is a winning combination for the Cray XT line of supercomputers and for our customers."

The compute blades in both the Cray XT6 and Cray XT6m systems feature four compute nodes designed for high scalability in a small footprint and can be configured with up to 96 processor cores per blade or more than 2,300 processor cores per cabinet. Each compute node is composed of two AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors (the eight and 12-core "Maranello" platform), each coupled with its own memory and dedicated Cray Seastar2+ interconnect. The compute nodes in the Cray XT6 and Cray XT6m systems can also be configured with 32 GB or 64 GB DDR3 memory.

"For the past six years, Cray and AMD have worked closely together to forge a new era in HPC -- an era of high performance and high parallelism," said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server/Workstation and Embedded Division, AMD. "Cray has taken full advantage of the scalability advancements in processing cores that we have made in order to design, build and deliver tightly integrated systems. AMD shares in Cray's excitement for the Cray XT6 and Cray XT6m systems, and we are pleased that the upcoming new 'Maranello' platform is an integral part of these new supercomputers."

Cray's first customer for the new Cray XT6 system is the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which is the managing agent for the High-End Computing Terascale Resource (HECToR) project located at Scotland's University of Edinburgh. The HECToR service continues to be at the forefront of HPC in Europe and demonstrates its leadership position by improving its ability to provide HPC capability. The new Cray XT6 system will allow computational scientists in the U.K. to push the frontiers of science even further.

The Cray XT6 series of supercomputers is not only one of the leading HPC systems worldwide, it is also in position to push forward to new heights in 2010. With an infrastructure that is designed to be fully upgradeable, the Cray XT6 series can facilitate upgrades to anticipated future "Interlagos" 12- and 16-core processors from AMD, as well as network upgrades that will push the boundaries of HPC -- providing functionalities that are unavailable at these scales today. Cray expects to announce further enhancements that will provide owners of Cray XT6 systems with continuing improvements in reliability, HPC-specific features and performance over standard clusters, and provide years of leadership-class performance -- ultimately lowering the total cost of computing and providing more value to the most demanding of customers.

About the Cray XT Supercomputer Series

As the world's most scalable Linux supercomputer, the Cray XT product line combines unprecedented sustained application performance with exceptional manageability and reliability, and lower cost of ownership for customers. Using powerful AMD Opteron processors, the Cray XT line is optimized for memory-intensive and/or compute-biased workloads. The successful Cray XT product line features ECOphlex technology -- packaging and design features that promote energy savings along two dimensions: by enabling greater system density and by reducing the need for expensive air cooling and air conditioners. Additionally, the Cray Linux Environment enables optimized performance across a broader range of applications.

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 is designed to enable 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 is focused on delivering 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.