PHYSICS

Cray today announced the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) in Calcutta, India has selected the Cray XT5 supercomputer for its Theory Division. Scheduled for installation in summer of 2009, this will be the first Cray XT5 system in India. Cray, with its Indian sales and service representative Hinditron Cray Supercomputers (India) Pvt. Ltd., has been associated with SINP since the 2005 installation of a Cray XD1 supercomputer.

SINP, an institute for basic research and training in physical and biophysical sciences, will use the Cray XT5 system to advance its work in quantum chromodynamics and other areas of theoretical physics. The two-cabinet Cray XT5 system for SINP contains Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, nearly 13 teraflops (trillions of calculationsper second) of peak performance and 2.75 terabytes of main memory. SINP is the first customer in Cray's Asia Pacific region to acquire the same computing architectureas the petaflops system Cray recently installed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

"The Theory Division of our institute has remained at the fore-front of a multitude of theoretical research areas. Some of the work carried out at Saha Institute has been recognized world over as milestone contributions," said Professor Bikash Sinha, Director, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. "The new Cray XT5 system, together with the existing Cray XD1 system, should enable us to explore new territories, especially in the areas of lattice quantum chromodynamics in chiral regime and at large volumes."

"We are very pleased with SINP's selection of the Cray XT5 system, as it introduces the Asia Pacific region to the same supercomputing technology currently powering the famous 'Jaguar' petaflops system," said Andrew Wyatt, vice president, Cray Asia Pacific. "SINP's work in theoretical physics is a perfect match for the Cray XT5, which is designed to run challenging, high-end scientific research and engineering applications with superior scalability, performance and reliability. Additionally, our association with Hinditron Cray ensures SINP will receive the superior level of service and support that our customers have come to expect."