Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (Nasdaq:CRAY) today announced
the Company is creating the world’s first production-ready,
Arm®-based supercomputer with the addition of Cavium (Nasdaq:CAVM)
ThunderX2™ processors, based on 64-bit Armv8-A architecture, to the
Cray® XC50™ supercomputer. Cray customers will have a complete
Arm-based supercomputer that features a full software environment,
including the Cray Linux Environment, the Cray Programming
Environment, and Arm-optimized compilers, libraries, and tools for
running today’s supercomputing workloads.
Cray enhanced its compiler and programming environment to
achieve more performance out of the Cavium ThunderX2 processors. In
a head-to-head comparison of 135 standard HPC benchmarks, Cray’s
compiler showed performance advantages in two-thirds of the
benchmarks, and showed significant (more than 20 percent)
performance advantage in one-third of the tests, versus other
public domain Armv8 compilers from LLVM and GNU.
“With the integration of Arm processors into our flagship Cray
XC50 systems, we will offer our customers the world’s most flexible
supercomputers,” said Fred Kohout, Cray’s senior vice president of
products and chief marketing officer. “Adding Arm processors
complements our system’s ability to support a variety of host
processors, and gives customers a unique, leadership-class
supercomputer for compute, simulation, big data analytics, and deep
learning. Our software engineers built the industry’s best Arm
toolset to maximize customer value from the system, which is
representative of the R&D work we do every day to build on our
leadership position in supercomputing.”
Cray is currently working with multiple supercomputing centers
on the development of Arm-based supercomputing systems, including
various labs in the United States Department of Energy and the GW4
alliance – a coalition of four leading, research-intensive
universities in the UK. Through an alliance with Cray and the Met
Office in the UK, GW4 is designing and building “Isambard,” an
Arm-based Cray XC50 supercomputer.
“The GW4 Isambard project aims to deliver the world’s first
Arm-based, production-quality HPC service,” said Professor Simon
McIntosh-Smith from the University of Bristol. “Ease of use,
robustness, and performance, are all critical for a production
service, and our early experiences with Cray’s ThunderX2 systems
and end-to-end Arm software environment are very promising. All of
the real scientific codes we’ve tried so far have worked out of the
box, and we’re also seeing performance competitive with the best in
class. Having access to Cray’s optimized HPC software stack of
compilers and libraries in addition to all of the open-source tools
has been a real advantage.”
“The unmatched scalability and flexibility of the Arm
architecture, combined with our upcoming SVE technology is the most
efficient path to achieving the vision of exascale,” said Drew
Henry, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure
Line of Business, Arm. “The Cray XC50 takes us one step closer to
exascale by fueling a new era of innovation with the HPC community,
while expanding the HPC footprint of the Arm ecosystem, the world’s
largest and most open for silicon designers, software developers,
and tools providers.”
“Cavium has developed a leadership position in the Arm server
market, and has collaborated with Cray for the last three years,
starting with our first-generation ThunderX Arm processor, which
was used to optimize the Cray compiler, libraries, and tool chain
for the Armv8-A architecture,” said Gopal Hegde, VP/GM, Data Center
Processor Group at Cavium. “ThunderX2 combines our
second-generation, fully out of order high-performance Armv8-A
custom cores with best-in-class memory bandwidth and rich IO
configurations to provide a highly-differentiated processor for HPC
applications. ThunderX2 based blades in Cray’s flagship XC50
systems, integrated with the Aries network and Cray’s optimized
software stack, enables an ideal supercomputing platform for a
variety of high performance compute workloads.”
Cray XC50 supercomputers with the Cavium ThunderX2 processors
will be available in both liquid-cooled cabinets and air-cooled
cabinets to address a variety of datacenter needs. Compute blades
can be mixed and matched with Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors,
Intel Xeon Phi™ processors, and NVIDIA® Tesla® GPU accelerators.
The Arm-based Cray XC50 supercomputers will be available in the
second quarter of 2018.
About the Cray XC50 SupercomputerThe Cray XC50
series of supercomputers are designed to handle the most
challenging workloads requiring sustained multi-petaflop
performance. They incorporate the Aries high performance network
interconnect for low latency and scalable global bandwidth, as well
as the latest 64-bit Cavium ThunderX2 processors, Intel Xeon
Scalable processors, Intel Xeon Phi processors, and NVIDIA Tesla
GPU accelerators. With a top peak performance of 500 petaflops, and
one petaflops in a single cabinet, the Cray XC50 supercomputer
delivers on Cray’s commitment to performance supercomputing with an
architecture and software environment that provides extreme
scalability and sustained performance.
For more information on the Cray XC™ supercomputers, please
visit the Cray website at www.cray.com.
About Cray Inc.Global supercomputing leader
Cray Inc. (Nasdaq:CRAY) provides innovative systems and solutions
enabling scientists and engineers in industry, academia and
government to meet existing and future simulation and analytics
challenges. Leveraging more than 45 years of experience in
developing and servicing the world’s most advanced supercomputers,
Cray offers a comprehensive portfolio of supercomputers and big
data storage and analytics solutions delivering unrivaled
performance, efficiency and scalability. Cray’s Adaptive
Supercomputing vision is focused on delivering innovative
next-generation products that integrate diverse processing
technologies into a unified architecture, allowing customers to
meet the market’s continued demand for realized performance. Go to
www.cray.com for more information.
Safe Harbor StatementThis press release
contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section
21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Section 27A of the
Securities Act of 1933, including, but not limited to, statements
related to the availability of Cray systems with future processors
and Cray’s ability to deliver a system that meets GW4’s
requirements. These statements involve current expectations,
forecasts of future events and other statements that are not
historical facts. Inaccurate assumptions and known and unknown
risks and uncertainties can affect the accuracy of forward-looking
statements and cause actual results to differ materially from those
anticipated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could
affect actual future events or results include, but are not limited
to, the risk that Cray is not able to successfully complete its
planned product development efforts in a timely fashion or at all,
the risk that the Cavium ThunderX2 processors planned for the Cray
systems are not available with the performance expected or when
expected or are not incorporated into the Cray systems when
expected or at all, the risk that the system required by GW4 is not
completed or put into production in a timely fashion or does not
perform as expected and such other risks as identified in the
Company’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended
September 30, 2017, and from time to time in other reports filed by
Cray with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. You should
not rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which apply
only as of the date of this release. Cray undertakes no duty to
publicly announce or report revisions to these statements as new
information becomes available that may change the Company’s
expectations.
Cray, and the stylized CRAY mark are registered trademarks of
Cray Inc. in the United States and other countries, and XC50 and XC
are trademarks of Cray Inc. Other product and service names
mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective
owners.
Cray Media:Nick Davis206/701-2123pr@cray.com
Cray Investors:Paul Hiemstra206/701-2044ir@cray.com
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