Cray Awarded $26 Million HPC Contract

Cray Inc. announced that the Department of Defense (DoD) HPC Modernization Program (HPCMP) has awarded Cray a $26 million supercomputer contract for a next-generation Cray XC supercomputer and a Cray Sonexion storage system.

The systems will be placed at the HPCMP’s DoD Supercomputing Resource Center (DSRC) located at the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL).

The HPCMP will use this next-generation XC supercomputer to run advanced, complex simulations that deliver scientific discoveries, technological advances and analyses that provide soldiers with the capabilities to execute full-spectrum operations.

“Supercomputing is a key enabling technology for the DoD as it continues mission critical work to improve both the safety and effectiveness of the US military,” observed John West, director, HPCMP. “These newly acquired Cray systems ensure that scientists and engineers in the DoD’s research, engineering, and evaluation communities will continue to be able to take advantage of a robust computing ecosystem that includes the best computational technologies available today.“

In operation for more than 20 years, the DoD HPCMP remains focused on its mission to accelerate technology development and transition into superior defense capabilities through the strategic application of HPC, networking and computational expertise. The HPCMP provides the people, expertise and technologies that increase the productivity of the DoD’s Research, Development, Test and Evaluation community.

“Cray has been fortunate to be a partner of the DoD’s HPC Modernization Program throughout the years, and we take great pride in providing their researchers and engineers with powerful supercomputing technologies,” said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO, Cray. “Our next-generation XC system is our most advanced supercomputer ever, and we are excited and proud that our compute and storage solution will be a valuable resource for the HPCMP’s incredibly important mission.“

The XC series of supercomputers are engineered to meet the performance challenges of most demanding HPC users. Special features include: the industry Aries system interconnect; a Dragonfly network topology that frees applications from locality constraints; cooling systems to lower customers’ TCO; the next-generation of the scalable Cray Linux environment supporting a wide range of applications; Cray’s HPC optimized programming environment for improved performance and programmability, and the ability to handle a variety of processor types.

The Cray Sonexion storage solution will include more than 4PB of storage capacity, including SSD technology, running at speeds approaching half of a TB/s of bandwidth. Sonexion storage system combines Cray’s Lustre expertise integrated in a design that allows scalability from 5GB/s to more than 1TB/s in a single file system. Management and operations are simplified through an appliance design with all storage components including software, storage and infrastructure.

The initial contract, awarded by US Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, is valued at more than $26 million in product revenue and also includes four separately priced one year options for maintenance. The system is expected to be installed in late 2014.