Cray XC30-AC, supercomputing at a price less prohibitive

Cray Cray Announces Availability of supersytem XC30-AC that relying on a system of air cooling makes it possible to keep the costs of production and the final price, which starts from "only" $ 500,000

At the recent Cray User Group meeting, Cray has announced the introduction of the Cray-AC XC30,XC30 new solution line Cray addressed technical enterprise in the world for that category of HPC that they need to own a computational capacity of a super but at relatively low cost.

Peg Williams, senior vice president of high performance computing for Cray, has comentato: "Innovation is not limited to companies [the ranking] Fortune 100. There are many Fortune 1000 companies, as well as departments within Fortune 100, which increasingly need supercomputing systems capable of providing a key tool to benefit from the execution of complex simulations "

The term "relatively low cost" should not make us think of popular figures: Cray XC30-AC (where AC stands for air-cooled) is offered at a starting price of $ 500,000. The Cray supercomputer XC30-AC offers the same distinctive features of the system Cray XC30 (marketed between 10 and 30 million dollars, just to fix the comparison), including the interconnection system of Aries, the network topology Dragonfly, environment Cray Linux operating environment and programming HPC Cray. Cray XC30-AC also provides support to various types of processors, including Intel Xeon processors, Intel Xeon Phicoprocessors and accelerators NVIDIA Tesla GPUs.

The main difference between the two systems lies in the system of air cooling of Cray XC30-AC, which requires a construction and a structure less complex and more economical compared to the "big brother" Cray XC30. The supersytem XC30-AC is characterized by cabinet of more compact dimensions, equipped with 16 vertical blade for cabinet and single fan that ensures a flow of air vertically from the bottom upwards. Even the networking subsystem and the power contribute to the containment of the price, which does not require the first optical cable and the second supporting supply voltages of 480V and 208V.

With all the features and functionality of our systems Cray XC30, the new Cray XC30-AC is perfectly suited for technical enterprise customers, giving them the opportunity to take advantage of all the first-class computational resources of a Cray supercomputer at a price of start much lower, said Williams.