SEATTLE, and FRANKFURT, Germany, Dec. 2 -- As part of a company-wide goal of reaching sustained exascale performance by the end of the next decade, global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. today announced the launch of its Exascale Research Initiative at the Cray Executive Forum Europe currently taking place in Frankfurt, Germany. This research initiative will explore new ideas and technologies for overcoming the challenges of delivering a supercomputing system capable of sustained exaflop (one quintillion mathematical calculations per second) application performance.

As the first company to design and build a supercomputer that achieved sustained application performance of more than one petaflops (quadrillion mathematical calculations per second), Cray is committed to the research and development of new technologies necessary to achieve exaflops computing. The challenges are significant and will require research and development into power and cooling infrastructure, system and application resiliency, lightweight communication, efficient processor and network architectures, and new programming models.

"We are very excited to be partnering closely with the European HPC community in kicking off this important initiative for the company," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "Reaching and surpassing the petaflops barrier was an extraordinary achievement and these systems are providing unsurpassed supercomputing resources for meeting significant scientific challenges. We know there are scientific breakthroughs in important areas such as new energy sources and global climate change that are waiting for exascale performance, and we are working hard on building next-generation supercomputers that will be capable of it."

Initially, Cray will assemble a team of researchers located at EPCC, which is the supercomputing centre at The University of Edinburgh, and at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). Cray will closely collaborate with these centers along with its European software partners such as Allinea Software Ltd.

On Dec. 3, The University of Edinburgh will announce the creation of its Exascale Technology Centre at EPCC. Peter Ungaro will speak at the official launch of this centre, which will be a joint investment of Cray and the University of Edinburgh and which forms part of Cray's Exascale Research Initiative in Europe. The other initial partner within this Cray research initiative is CSCS. Cray will collaborate with CSCS in the framework of the HP2C project, which targets the development of future applications for very large scale simulations (see www.hp2c.org). Cray plans to launch new strategic alliances in the future to continually grow and expand this important research initiative.

"This new initiative is a significant demonstration of Cray's commitment to broaden our R&D efforts in Europe," said Ulla Thiel, vice president of Cray in Europe. "The path to exascale will involve a large partnership of companies, government institutions and academia in order to reach our real goal of applications running at the exaflop level."

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.