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Apr. 21, 2010

If you're looking for a very fast, super computer with about 520,000 CPU cores in it, Cray Research happens to make just what you might be looking for.

Cray Research, maker of some of the fastest supercomputers in the world, just released the third-generation of its Linux super-operating system. And as you might expect, it's got all the latest and the greatest hardware as well...

First, Super Linux is at the root of one of its newest features and biggest selling points: what Cray is calling "Cluster Compatibility Mode."

Previous versions of the CLE (Cray Linux Environment) have not played nicely with third-party applications. Considerable cost and many efforts were required to port programs and applications to utilize Cray's proprietary communication protocol.

However, that's a thing of the past, with the Cluster Compatibility Mode in CLE 3. Now Cray super computer users can now deploy 3rd party applications on their systems as though it were an ordinary Linux cluster — no porting required.

According to Cray's Scalable Systems Vice President Barry Bolding, CLE 3 "can run our customers' key ISV applications right out of the box."

Various offerings from a number of independent software vendors (ISVs) — including SIMULIA, Accelrys, and CEI — have already confirmed that their applications will run under CLE 3 without modifications.

CEI President Anders Grimsrud described the Cluster Compatibility Mode as "a game-changing feature in Cray's latest operating system," going on to say that his company is "pleased to again be a part of the Cray computing experience for HPC."

Another core feature of CLE 3 is its dramatically-increased scalability. The previous version of the Cray Linux Environment could support as many as 200,000 cores — CLE 3 nearly triples that capacity, supporting up to 520,000 cores.

Additionally, performance-enhancing features have also been added to CLE 3 that allow fine-grained control of system resources and better memory management, offering performance enhancements of as much as 10 to 20 percent.

Cray plans to begin distribution of its new CLE 3 on its XT6/XT6m line, and expand it to its XT5/XT5m offerings before November 2010.

A global leader in supercomputing, Cray provides innovative computing platforms that enable scientists and engineers in academia, government, and industry to meet both existing and future computational challenges on a wide variety of complex applications.

Cray supercomputers provide vastly superior sustained performance on critical applications, scalability to handle larger problems and the reliability to run jobs to completion. This gives scientists and engineers the ability to not only get answers faster but also allows a broad spectrum of users to ask new questions.

Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing (CAS) model is based on the concept that in order to achieve truly superior application performance, as well as address the need for higher user productivity, HPC systems must go a step beyond simply providing access to a variety of processing technologies.

Different applications achieve optimal performance on different types of CPUs, but most high-performance computers typically offer only one type of processor. Adaptive Supercomputing combines multiple processing technologies in a single system and hides this complexity from the user through innovative new software technologies, allowing scientific and engineering problems to be solved more quickly.

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Source: Cray Inc.

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