By Steve Fisher, Editor In Chief -- Yesterday Cray Inc. and Dell announced an agreement for Cray to market high-performance cluster solutions and services worldwide using Dell PowerEdge servers. To learn more about this meeting of the minds between companies viewed by many as being at opposite ends of the high-tech spectrum, Supercomputing Online interviewed Steve Conway, VP, Corporate Communications, Cray Inc. SCO: Please give us some details about the agreement with Dell. CONWAY: Cray will sell and support Linux-based cluster solutions that combine Dell PowerEdge servers and storage with value-added HPC technologies and services from Cray. For Cray, this is more a services play than a hardware play. We'll let Dell build the standard technology-based platforms, because that's what they do best. Cray will surround those platforms with deep HPC expertise, which is what we do best. Cray and Dell separately discovered a market need for great cluster technology combined with strong experience helping HPC customers with problem-solving. This is more than a standard OEM reseller agreement. Beyond installation, maintenance and support, Cray will offer services ranging from site planning, system integration and training, to hardware and software customization. It's a 3-year agreement that's automatically renewable. It covers all Dell current and future cluster products, along with a broad range of storage and networking options. Dell will provide Cray with the cluster products, training, and support for Cray's engineering and service organizations. Cray and Dell will confer as needed on specific sales opportunities, and meet on a quarterly basis regarding potential enhancements to Dell's cluster product roadmap. SCO: Can you give us some technical details on the types of clustered systems you'll be marketing? How big? How many nodes? How many processors per node? Interconnect technology? Pricing? Performance? Price/Performance? Things like that. CONWAY: The starting point for the Cray cluster offerings will be Dell PowerEdge servers based on Linux and the Intel processor family. There are no strict size limits. Cray will sell starter-size clusters with a small number of processors, on up to larger clusters with hundreds or thousands of processors. Through Dell, Cray will offer customers a broad choice of networking and storage technologies for the clusters. Dell is market-centric and technology-agnostic, so they aren't religiously tied to one choice in any category. We're already pursuing a list of opportunities with prospects who "want it their way" and can't get the flexible choices they need from other sources. We will operate on a consultative model. We start with the cost-effective Dell products, see what value-added support and services each customer wants, then discuss pricing with the customer. I'm sure some popular configurations will emerge over time, and those will have set pricing, but we'll start by treating each opportunity as a unique one. Price/performance follows an analogous path. We start with Dell products that have strong price/performance. Cray added value, starting with basic maintenance and support and extending on up to software and hardware customization, can strongly boost the performance, and that has an impact on the pricing. The point is that the customer or prospect does the choosing. SCO: How much of Cray's business are you expecting the clusters, and professional services on the whole, to account for? CONWAY: We're deliberately starting our Professional Services business modestly, so it can be profitable every step of the way. Over time, this business will be significant for Cray. We're in the process of putting together detailed forecasts for Professional Services and for the cluster-related component of that now. SCO: Does this trend toward using clusters of industry-standard computer systems ever make you folks nervous? CONWAY: As Vito Corleone said, "Why should I be nervous? Men have been coming to kill me since I was twelve." Seriously, Cray's had more HPC market experience and has faced more competitors than almost anyone. We understand very well that no single architecture can effectively handle all classes of problems and workloads. That's why, starting in 1993, Cray Research supplemented its vector supercomputer offerings with the Cray T3D and T3E products. Within the first 12 months, the Cray T3E became the global market leader among microprocessor-based HPC systems. In many ways, it's still the product that cluster-makers are trying with only partial success to emulate. It's still the preferred microprocessor-based product for handling the biggest, toughest kinds of problems and workloads. There's still demand for T3E systems today, but this demand is effectively limited to installed base upgrades because, for historical reasons, the new Cray Inc. legally cannot develop a direct successor product. Even if we had the legal right to do this, we would start out today with a cluster platform that uses a greater number of standard technologies. When we designed the T3D and T3E systems, there weren't many standard technologies available beyond microprocessors. Cray Research has to develop its own fast interconnect, and so on. In any case, Cray is no stranger to microprocessor-based systems and arguably paved the way for HPC clusters. No computer vendor understands better than Cray how to apply cluster solutions to HPC problems and workloads, certainly not in technical computing markets. We're really the veterans in this market. That's one of the big reasons why Dell wanted to partner with Cray in the HPC cluster arena. SCO: What types of companies and organizations will you be going after as potential cluster clients? CONWAY: We'll market our cluster solutions and services in all of the established HPC technical markets -- government, industry, academia -- and in newer markets such as bioinformatics, where Cray is gaining recognition as a preferred vendor for enabling breakthrough solutions. ---------- For additional information see Cray to Market Cluster Solutions Using Dell PowerEdge Servers