Cray Secures $174 Million Supercomputer Contract From National Nuclear Security Administration

Cray Inc. has been awarded one of the largest contracts in the company’s history – a $174 million deal to provide the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) with a next generation Cray XC supercomputer and a Cray Sonexion storage system.

According to a company release, the next-generation XC supercomputer will provide the NNSA with a supercomputing system to advance the mission for the agency’s stockpile stewardship program. The system, named Trinity by the NNSA, is a joint effort between the New Mexico Alliance for Computing at Extreme Scale (ACES) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories as part of the NNSA Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (ASC).

“Both Los Alamos and Sandia have a long history with Cray, going back to the beginning of the supercomputing era and most recently with the Cielo platform,” said Gary Grider, HPC division leader, Los Alamos. “That history continues with the Trinity platform that will provide next generation supercomputing in support of the U. S. nuclear security enterprise.”

“We look forward to working with Cray to create a significant increase in supercomputing capability for key NNSA national security applications,” said Bruce Hendrickson, senior manager of the extreme- scale computing group, Sandia National Laboratories. “Trinity will target the largest and most demanding simulations for NNSA.”

“It is a real honor that one of the largest contracts in our company’s history has come from one of our most important customers,” said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO, Cray. “Our partnership and collaboration with the NNSA has led to the development of groundbreaking supercomputing systems, including the Cray XT3 system that resulted from the Red Storm project. The NNSA has consistently deployed the world’s most advanced supercomputing systems to support their critical mission of ensuring the health of our nation’s nuclear stockpile. We couldn’t be more proud that, once again, the NNSA has placed its trust in Cray to provide them with the computational tools needed to support their important mission.“

NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the US Department of Energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science.