GOVERNMENT

Cray Inc. today announced that Software Cradle Co. Ltd., a prominent Japanese computational fluid dynamics (CFD) application developer, has chosen the Cray XD1 supercomputer as the company's platform for software development and consulting. Software Cradle's Cray XD1 installation consists of six chassis and 72 AMD Opteron processors. The firm selected the Cray XD1 supercomputer after a test system achieved excellent competitive benchmark results when running Software Cradle's SC/Tetra software . For example, in a benchmark test designed to measure turnaround time, a 16-processor Cray XD1 system running SC/Tetra completed a complex problem two times faster than a similarly configured 3.6-GHz Xenon cluster. When more processors were added to assess the systems' scalability, Cray XD1 performance held steady at up to 64 processors, while the performance of the Xenon cluster dropped off rapidly. "Our tests indicate that the Cray XD1 supercomputer will help Software Cradle fulfill our objective of giving engineers quick, precise solutions to CFD problems, while also providing exceptional ease of use," said Ichiro Komada, CEO of Software Cradle. "With its high-performance interconnect technology and high-density packaging, the Cray XD1 system will improve the productivity of our development team and enable us to demonstrate the full potential of SC/Tetra code to our customers. The potent combination of Cray hardware and Software Cradle application code sets a new standard for price/performance in the CFD world." "This endorsement from a major CFD software company confirms yet again that the Cray XD1 supercomputer's exceptional interconnect technology and ability to scale efficiently to high processor counts makes it a premier choice for leading-edge engineering groups that need to support demanding computer-aided engineering (CAE) software," said Mamoru Nakano, president, Cray Japan. "The Cray XD1 system continues to excel at benchmark tests that measure the performance of CAE codes on various computing platforms. We look forward to a long and productive relationship with Software Cradle as they serve their loyal customer base and expand into new markets."