GOVERNMENT

Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. announced that Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors will be available as an option on Cray XD1 supercomputers in July 2005, and on Cray XT3 supercomputers later in 2005. AMD's cutting-edge 32- and 64-bit dual-core technology fits two processor cores on a single die, giving users of these Cray systems double the processing capacity in the same amount of space with minimal increases in power consumption and heat levels. The 10,000 processor Cray XT3 supercomputer installed at Sandia National Laboratories is the largest Opteron processor-based system in the world. Direct-connect system architectures of the Cray XD1 system and the Cray XT3 system speed high-performance computing (HPC) applications by directly linking processors, memory and I/O resources instead of using a conventional PCI bus. These architectures ensure that sophisticated software can take full advantage of all the available processing power as more processors are added to the system. "With our strong collaboration with AMD, we have already performed successful early testing of the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors on the Cray XD1 system on a range of applications and are excited to be rolling them out to our customers," said Cray president Peter Ungaro. "All of our Cray supercomputers, including the Cray XD1 and Cray XT3 systems, were designed to accommodate higher density dual-core processors in order to leverage our customers' investment in these systems. As a result, customers who choose the dual-core option will enjoy improved price/performance, while continuing to see exceptional sustained application performance without the need to modify their applications." "Cray has helped prepare the way for the next stage in processor evolution by designing the Cray XD1 and the Cray XT3 supercomputers to take advantage of Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor performance," said Ben Williams, vice president of Commercial and Server/Workstation business at AMD. "As dual-core AMD64 technology is also based on AMD's Direct Connect Architecture, it continues to eliminate processor, memory and I/O bottlenecks, while enhancing overall performance for HPC applications." Dual-core processors allow Cray to achieve very high density in both the Cray XD1 and Cray XT3 supercomputers. One Cray XD1 cabinet provides 288 AMD Opteron 200 Series processor cores, boosting its computing capability from the 744 gigaflops (744 billion calculations per second) available with single-core processors to more than 1.2 teraflops. The Cray XT3 supercomputer, based on the Sandia Red Storm massively parallel processor (MPP) system design, can operate with more than 60,000 processor cores -- delivering up to 269 teraflops (269 trillion FLOPS), an increase of 109 teraflops over single-core devices.