SCIENCE

Cray has announced that the company has been awarded a contract from the University of Stuttgart to deliver a new supercomputer to the university's High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS). The multi-year, multi-phase contract includes the delivery of a Cray XE6 supercomputer and the future delivery of Cray's next-generation supercomputer code-named "Cascade."

The new Cray system at HLRS will serve as a supercomputing resource for researchers, scientists and engineers throughout Europe. HLRS is one of the leading centers in the European PRACE initiative and is currently the only large European high performance computing (HPC) center to work directly with industrial partners in automotive and aerospace engineering. HLRS is also a key partner of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS), which is an alliance of the three major supercomputing centers in Germany that collectively provide one of the largest and most powerful supercomputer infrastructures in the world.

"This is an exciting announcement for Cray on a number of fronts. HLRS has been an important partner of ours for many years, and this win in Germany continues to build on our momentum internationally," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "HLRS' strong partnership with the automotive and aerospace industries is also important as we continue to expand our presence in these customer segments. Finally, this contract marks Cray's first order for our next-generation supercomputer code-named Cascade, which is another major milestone in delivering on our Adaptive Supercomputing vision. We are pleased to be working with HLRS and we look forward to delivering our supercomputing technology to its broad user community."

"HLRS and Cray have enjoyed a long history in ensuring our researchers and scientists are equipped with innovative supercomputing systems that are built with leading-edge supercomputing technology," said Prof. Dr. Michael Resch, director of HLRS. "Cray is just the right partner as we enter the era of petaflops computing. Together with Cray's outstanding supercomputing technology, our center will be able to carry through the new initiative for engineering and industrial simulation. This is especially important as we work at the forefront of electric mobility and sustainable energy supply."

Cray was awarded the multi-year, multi-phase supercomputer contract based on its ability to efficiently scale key software applications, its ability to easily upgrade future Cray systems, and its custom-designed interconnect and software environment.

"We are honored that the University of Stuttgart has awarded this supercomputer contract to Cray," said Dr. Ulla Thiel, Cray vice president, Europe. "This contract represents our largest supercomputer installation in Germany and we are proud to have been selected to deliver on the demanding needs of HLRS and its many users. We have enjoyed a successful, long-term relationship with HLRS and we are very excited that our joint collaboration will continue and grow even stronger in the future."

The Cray XE6 supercomputer combines Cray's current Gemini system interconnect with powerful AMD Opteron processors and is designed to bring production petascale computing to a new and expanded base of HPC users. Fully upgradeable from the Cray XT5 and Cray XT6 line of supercomputers, the Cray XE6 system delivers improved interconnect performance and features additional enhancements such as improved network resiliency, a mature and scalable software environment and the ability to run a broad array of ISV applications with the latest version of the Cray Linux Environment. This collection of industry-leading features provides Cray XE6 users with a supercomputing system that combines true scalable performance with production reliability.

Cray's next-generation Cascade supercomputer will feature a continuing evolution of the Cray Linux Environment, Cray's HPC-optimized programming environment, a next-generation interconnect chipset follow-on to Gemini and support for future Intel Xeon processors. The Cascade supercomputer is in part made possible by Cray's participation in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) High Productivity Computing Systems program.

Consisting of products and services, the multi-year, multi-phase contract is valued at more than $60 million. The Cray XE6 supercomputer is expected to go into production in 2011. The second phase of the contract, the delivery of the Cascade system, is expected to be completed in the second half of 2013.