SEATTLE, WA and OFFENBACH, GERMANY, Jan. 15 – Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. today announced it has been awarded a $23 million dollar contract to provide two Cray XC30 supercomputers and two Cray Sonexion 1600 storage systems to Germany's National Meteorological Service -- the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). Located in Offenbach, Germany, DWD is one of the world's premier numerical weather prediction centers.

Researchers and scientists at DWD will be able to apply the petascale computing resources of the two Cray XC30 supercomputers -- one of which will be used for production and the other for research and backup -- towards its mission of meeting the meteorological requirements arising from all areas of economy and society in Germany. The new Cray supercomputers will enable DWD to produce higher resolution and more accurate global and regional weather forecasts to help fulfill the organization's wide array of weather responsibilities, such as the meteorological safeguarding of aviation and shipping, and the issuance of official warnings of weather occurrences that could become a danger for public safety.

"At our national meteorological service, we are responsible for providing services for the protection of life and property in the form of weather and climate information," said Prof. Dr. Gerhard Adrian, President of DWD. "This is the core task of the DWD, and thus it is imperative that we equip our researchers and scientists with scalable, productive, and above all, highly reliable supercomputing systems. The Cray XC30 supercomputers will be valuable resources for us, and we are pleased to be working with Cray."

"DWD is one of the world's most prestigious numerical weather prediction centers, and we're honored to provide them with the supercomputing technologies necessary for delivering such an extensive range of important services," said Dr. Ulla Thiel, Cray vice president, Europe. "We are looking forward to building a strong collaboration and close partnership with DWD. This contract is yet another example of how we continue to expand our presence in the meteorological community in Europe and across the globe."

Previously code-named "Cascade," the Cray XC30 supercomputer is Cray's most advanced high performance computing (HPC) system and is engineered to meet the performance challenges of HPC users. The Cray XC30 supercomputer features the new Aries system interconnect; a new Dragonfly network topology that frees applications from locality constraints; an innovative cooling system that utilizes a transverse airflow to lower customers' total cost of ownership; the next-generation of the scalable, high performance Cray Linux Environment that also supports a wide range of ISV applications; Cray's HPC optimized programming environment; and the ability to handle a wide variety of processor types including the Intel Xeon processors -- a first for Cray's high-end systems.

The two Cray Sonexion 1600 storage systems that will be deployed at DWD will have a combined capacity of more than 3 petabytes of storage and 72 gigabytes per-second of combined bandwidth. Cray's Sonexion Lustre System for HPC provides an embedded, compact design that can reduce the overall storage footprint by up to 50 percent over component-based solutions. Sonexion ensures consistency and predictability when scaling Lustre, and offers precision performance, optimal scalability, and an open solution for HPC and Big Data in a compact form factor.

Consisting of products and services, the multi-year, multi-phase contract is valued at more than $23 million, and the systems are expected to be delivered and put into production in 2013 and 2014.

About Cray Inc.

Global supercomputing leader Cray Inc. provides innovative systems and solutions enabling scientists and engineers in industry, academia and government to meet existing and future simulation and analytics challenges. Leveraging 40 years of experience in developing and servicing the world's most advanced supercomputers, Cray offers a comprehensive portfolio of high performance computing (HPC) systems, storage, and Big Data solutions delivering unrivaled performance, efficiency and scalability. 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.

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Source: Cray Inc.