SCIENCE

Cray has announced the company has sold a Cray XE6m supercomputer to GE Global Research, the technology development arm for the General Electric Company. The new Cray XE6m supercomputer will be used to support simulation-based engineering and science across the various disciplines at GE Global Research. The Cray system will give GE Global Research the ability to run more complex simulations in order to explore multi-physics challenges, gain higher fidelity insights and pursue areas of science and product development that could not be simulated using standard commodity clusters.

The Cray XE6m system, the midrange version of the Cray XE6 supercomputer, is optimized to support scalable application workloads in a cost-effective system. With a flexible, scalable and performance-optimized Cray Linux Environment, Cray XE6m users can leverage an operating system that makes it easier for a wide variety of applications to benefit from superior scalability. With Cray’s Cluster Compatibility Mode (CCM), Cray XE6m customers also benefit from the streamlined installation of a broad set of independent software vendor (ISV) applications.

High performance computing resources are being used to support more highly sophisticated computational simulation and modeling experiments that will enable industrial companies like GE to take product development to the next level. The sale of a Cray XE6m system to GE Global Research marks another significant step in a return to the manufacturing segment for Cray.

“It is clear that scalable supercomputing is extremely important to GE Global Research, and we are very pleased that this highly-respected organization has added a Cray XE6m system to its portfolio of HPC services,” said Barry Bolding, vice president of Cray’s product division. “The addition of GE Global Research to our HPC customer base is reflective of Cray’s early history, dating back to Cray Research, when our company had a strong commercial and manufacturing market presence. We have worked hard over the last few years to design, develop and introduce new lines of supercomputing systems, such as the Cray XE6m, that have the features, functions and reliability that is demanded by customers in the manufacturing space. We are excited that GE Global Research has turned to Cray and we are honored to have them as a flagship customer.”

The Cray XE6m builds on the reliability and scalability of the high-end Cray XE6 supercomputer and uses the same proven petascale technologies. The Cray XE6m system includes features found in the high-end Cray supercomputers, such as Cray’s Gemini interconnect, the latest version of the Cray Linux Environment and powerful AMD Opteron processors. The Cray XE6m system is designed to maintain an attractive cost of ownership and extend Cray’s presence in market segments that have needs for midrange supercomputing systems, such as the university, manufacturing, weather and life sciences communities. Fully upgradeable from previous generation Cray XT5m and Cray XT6m systems, the Cray XE6m supercomputer is also designed to give customers the ability to upgrade to future Cray systems and technologies.