The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing
June 16, 2006
Cray to Deliver Petaflop Supercomputer to ORNL in 2008
Cray Inc. has announced that they have signed a multi-year contract with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to provide the world's first petaflops-speed (1,000 trillion floating-point operations per second) supercomputer.
The total contract, including systems and services, is valued at about $200 million and calls for progressive upgrades to ORNL's existing Cray XT3 supercomputer. This system will be upgraded to dual-core processors later this year, accelerating peak speed from 25 teraflops (25 trillion calculations per second) to 50 teraflops. Further upgrades will increase the performance to 100 teraflops, planned in late 2006, and to 250 teraflops, planned in late 2007.
ORNL is then expected to install a next-generation Cray supercomputer in late 2008. This system, currently code-named 'Baker,' is designed to deliver peak performance of one petaflops, making it roughly three times faster than any existing computer in the world. All systems provided for in this contract will utilize current and future versions of the AMD Opteron processor.
"ORNL has had a long and rewarding partnership with Cray that has enabled us to accomplish breakthrough science," said ORNL Director Jeff Wadsworth. "The Department of Energy's Leadership Computing Facility at ORNL will help ensure that the United States remains a world leader by helping solve 'grand challenge' problems in nanoscience, biology and energy technologies."
"Without a doubt, this is a great day for Cray," said Cray president and CEO Peter Ungaro. "Cray supercomputers were first to achieve gigaflops sustained performance in 1989, and first to break the sustained teraflops barrier in 1998. Now ORNL and Cray are not only well on the way to breaking the petaflops barrier, we are also working together to realize Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing vision by making this immense processing power available for real-world scientific and engineering applications."
Staff and guest researchers at ORNL use Cray supercomputers to explore the frontiers of neutron science, biological systems, energy production and advanced materials. In addition, scientists and industry partners such as The Boeing Company, DreamWorks Animation SKG, Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology will be able to employ the enhanced Cray supercomputer configuration to conduct high-impact projects as part of DOE's INCITE program.
Cray expects to begin recognizing product revenue on the ORNL installation in the second half of 2006, with approximately one third of the revenue to be recognized over the next two years and the remainder expected to be recognized thereafter. The total approximate value of the contract is contingent upon Cray meeting certain delivery dates.
The ORNL contract was considered in Cray's prior revenue guidance for 2006, most recently updated on June 7, 2006. The size of the deliverables scheduled in late 2006 will influence total annual revenue and could modestly affect the range of outcomes for the year. The timing of revenue recognition on these deliverables could affect 2006 and 2007 by as much as $30 million.
Article Tools
Share Options
(Digg, Technorati, more)
Subscribe
Sponsored Links
New Paper: Parallel Computing Without Parallel Programming
Learn how domain experts can run VHLL programs like MATLAB® on a variety of high-performance platforms without low-level reprogramming and how to work with the largest datasets and complex algorithms without sacrificing ease of use or reducing productivity.
RSS Feeds
Feeds by Topic
- Applications
- Developer Tools
- Interconnects
- Middleware
- Networks
- Processors
- Storage
- Systems
- Visualization
Feeds by Industry
Feeds by Content Type
Feature Articles
Spider Up and Spinning Connections to All Computing Platforms at ORNL
Spider, the world's biggest Lustre-based, centerwide file system, has been fully tested to support Oak Ridge National Laboratory's new petascale Cray XT4/XT5 Jaguar supercomputer and is now offering early access to scientists.
Read More...
Wolfram Alpha: A Web-Based Application That Embraced Supercomputers
Wolfram Alpha, the Web-based computational engine introduced in May, is not a traditional supercomputing application, but relies on supercomputers to satisfy its unique requirements.
Read More...
TeraGrid '09: Student Participation Soars
There was a new energy at this year's TeraGrid '09 conference thanks to an outstanding turnout for the student program. Thanks to support from the National Science Foundation, more than 100 high school, undergraduate and graduate students were able to participate in the conference.
Read More...
Top Headlines
3D Seismic Data: Taking a Smarter Approach to Interpretation
Jul 09 | Engineer Live | The demand for computational tools to underpin the 3D seismic interpretation process has never been more apparent. Read more...
Engineering Unemployment Soared in 2Q to 8.6%
Jul 08 | EE Times | Unemployment for U.S. engineers has reached record levels, according to government figures. Read more...
Gartner Adjusts 2009 IT Spend Downward Again
Jul 08 | Network World | Global spending for 2009 projected to drop 6 percent, for a total of $3.2 trillion. Read more...
Concurrent and Parallel Are Not The Same
Jul 08 | Linux Magazine | Portability or efficiency? Neither is guaranteed when writing explicit parallel code. Read more...
800 TFLOP Real-Time Ray Tracing GPU Unveiled, Not for Gamers
Jul 07 | Ars Technica | Japanese company builds custom ASIC to accelerate real-time ray traced rendering for the auto industry. Read more...
Featured Whitepapers
Parallel Computing Without Parallel Programming
Jul 10 | | Engineers, scientists, and other domain experts depend on the productivity enabled by very high-level language (VHLL) tools like MATLAB® and Python. However, as datasets grow larger and programs get more sophisticated, ordinary desktop computers can no longer keep up. The paper explores how to run VHLL programs on high-performance platforms without low-level reprogramming. Work with large datasets and complex algorithms without sacrificing ease of use or reducing productivity.
Building High Performance Computing in a Green and Modular Solution Building Block
Apr 14 | | Many HPC IT departments are feeling the rising pressure to deliver more capacity computing and performance while trying to reduce the total cost of ownership. This white paper discusses how an environmentally-friendly and open-standards HPC building block based computing system using flexible interconnect options helps address capacity computing needs.
Multimedia
Webcast: Dell Expands HPC Access and Adoption with Intel Cluster Ready Program
Source: Addison Snell, GM/VP, Tabor Research; sponsored by Dell
Many organizations that could benefit from the use of HPC clusters find that it is complicated to get the systems up and running because of limited IT resources or the complexities of the clusters themselves. Learn how the Intel Cluster Ready program, for which Dell was an original partner, seeks to address this challenge for entry level and mid-range HPC users.
Video White Paper: Architecting a Better Network Storage Solution
BlueArc's Titan architecture represents an evolutionary step in file servers by creating a hardware-based file system that can scale bandwidth, IOPS, and overall data capacity well beyond conventional software-based devices. With its ability to virtualize a massive storage pool of up to four usable petabytes of tiered storage, Titan can scale with growing data requirements, offering a competitive advantage for businesses, researchers, or other enterprises seeking to better manage data growth while still ensuring optimal performance.
Webcast: HPC Development Solutions: Sun Studio & Sun HPC ClusterTools
Sun Studio Compilers and Tools and Sun HPC ClusterTools allow you to create high performance parallel applications for OpenSolaris, Solaris and Linux. Sun Studio Express 11/08 includes MPI performance analysis capabilities and full OpenMP 3.0 compiler support. Learn about all this and the latest in Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.1.
Newsletters
Stay informed! Subscribe to HPCwire email Newsletters.
HPC Job Bank
-
HPC Systems Administrator
McGill University -
High Performance Computing Data Center Manager
National Renewable Energy Laboratory -
High Performance Computing Systems Administrator
Idaho National Laboratory -
Solution Engineer- HPC
Dell Inc -
Parallel Programmer
Cardiff University -
Principal Software Research Engineer
Indiana University -
Post Doctoral Researcher - Exascale Stream Computing
IBM - Visit the HPCwire Job Bank
Featured Events
-
July 13-16, 2009
WORLDCOMP'09
Las Vegas , NV
USA
-
August 24-28, 2009
Data Mining: Levels I, II, & III
Denver , CO
USA