NEWS BRIEFS
Seattle, WA. — Cray Inc. announced that the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) has signed a $3 million order for a 32-processor Cray SV1 supercomputer and scheduled enhancements.
ARSC’s academic and government researchers will use the new system to study atmospheric, environmental and geophysical problems unique to the Arctic, polar regions and high latitudes. The agreement includes an option to acquire a next-generation Cray SV2 system, due out in the second half of 2002.
The Cray SV1 system will support applications such as climate forecasting models that examine ocean-ice-atmosphere-land interaction, models of volcanic ash plumes that threaten aircraft traveling in the Arctic, models of global surface air temperature trends and oil reservoir simulations.
“The Cray SV1 is essential to growing our user base and accelerating the work of existing users whose massive applications absorb as much speed and memory as we can deliver,” said Dr. Frank Williams, vice chancellor of administrative services at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and director of ARSC.
The new Cray SV1 supercomputer will be installed in three stages at the ARSC facility within the Fairbanks main campus. The new system replaces a 12-processor Cray J90 supercomputer and is expected to complete the stage-one customer acceptance process in September.
Stage one includes the delivery of a new Cray SV1 computer chassis, Cray SV1 CPUs and memory, and networking and peripheral equipment. Stage two, in the first quarter of 2001, will upgrade the Cray SV1 to faster CPUs. In second-quarter 2001, stage three will upgrade the system to larger, faster memory.
“This order underscores the overwhelming support we’re seeing among long-time customers like ARSC for Cray’s technology and roadmap. We’re committed to building the systems that help solve our customers’ most challenging problems and are delighted that ARSC will soon receive the first enhanced Cray SV1 processors,” said Cray Inc. President and CEO Jim Rottsolk.
ARSC supports high-performance computational research by U.S. Department of Defense and academic researchers in science and engineering with an emphasis on the high latitudes and the Arctic. The Center also operates a 272-processer Cray T3E supercomputer with 69.6 gigabytes of memory.
Cray Inc. designs, builds and sells high-performance vector processor and general-purpose parallel computer systems. The company has leading edge technology, multiple product platforms, nearly 900 employees, a $2 billion installed base of over 600 computers worldwide, major manufacturing and service capabilities and extensive global customer relationships. Cray believes its Multithreaded Architecture and Cray T3E and Cray SV2 systems together represent the future of supercomputing. Go to http://www.cray.com for more information on the company.
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