ECONOMICS

By Tim Little - At SC03 we were able to speak with Lori Keiser and William White, VP and Director of Cray’s Product Marketing group. Ms. Keiser and Mr. White were exited about SC03 and let us in on Cray’s plans to further their dominance in providing the extreme performance solutions for today High End Science challenges. While the Cray name has survived nearly 30 years and three business iterations, it seems Cray has again found a solid business foundation with seven straight quarters of profit. Combine seven straight quarter profit with the Cray X1 multiple “X” performance numbers the sky seems to be the limit as Cray marches along its path to sustained Peta flop performance. The long announced and government funded Cray X1 is now on the street and is considered not just a step in performance, but a major hurdle for such an effort. Steps are clock bumps along a moving line. Hurdles are made when new performance lines are drawn in the sand. The X1 has drawn a line and this line lands right in the heart of accomplishing High End Science. Supercomputing is supercomputing, but building a solution capable of solving more science is what the science industry required and is exactly what Cray delivered. However, every coin has two sides, or as my grandmother once told me there are actually three sides on coin. We will get the third side later. Keiser and White gave us a good perspective on Cray’s commitment to bringing the RedStorm project to market as commercial product. Cray is stepping beyond the technology and has looked at and listened to market demands. While science is science with multiple aspects in complexity and diversity, so are the electrical designs and applications laid over the silicon solutions. It is no secret that software applications need there own unique environments to run in. No one combination of cpu’s, cache, memory, interconnects and storage systems can efficiently solve all problems. Here comes RedStorm to balance Cray’s product offering. As Vectors are for its science and so are Scalars for its science - the perfect product match to accomplish High End Science in style. Not much different than the days of T90s and T3Es. While the days and installs of the T3E and T90 are well passed us, there are new aspirations for Cray to bring to the world a faster computer system than the one operating in the land of the Rising Sun. There has been much talk, an initial install, a facility sized to house more computer equipment the one can imagine and much lobbying in the press, to have the US regain its superiority in supercomputing. While no one we spoke at SC03 would confirm or deny Oak Ridge National Labs desire to house a computer solution some 300 times faster than the system currently sitting in the number one spot on the Top 500 List, the undertones of such an aggressive goal were apparent. So here we are setting on the launch of the next technical century - Where Bob Graybill states, “This is not for wimps”, as Cray enters into the second round of DARPA funding for future of high end computing. This is the third side. The new century has shown promise with the last two “SC” shows growing in leaps and bounds. The growth is not at the top though; this point of the pyramid belongs to the company that matches the perspective points. The top is small and not many companies can or have the desire to really play in that lot. It is tough lot taking more than switches, cable and cards. It takes talent born from passion and spirit to be the best no matter the task. The lingering question, how long can we be the best. For now Cray is back on top and own the point of pyramid.