Cray adopts Microsoft for supercomputer line

Microsoft's entry into the supercomputing market took another step Tuesday as high-end system leader Cray announced plans for its first machine running the Windows HPC Server operating system.

The Cray CX-1 supercomputer.

(Credit: Cray)

Cray announced the CX1 supercomputer, which will run HPC Server 2008 and have list prices between $25,000 and $60,000--prices which make it the company's most affordable system ever.

"Cray sees Microsoft Windows becoming an increasingly important force in the HPC market," Cray Senior VP Ian Miller said in a statement. "With the Cray CX1 high productivity system and Windows HPC Server 2008, we're bringing the power of Cray supercomputing to a much wider range of new users with an affordable and adaptable system that provides incredible value and is easy to install, program and use with a broad array of applications from independent software vendors."

Cray billed the CX1 as an expansion of its lineup, aimed at universities, laboratories, and departments within big businesses. It said that the machine will be "the world's highest-performing computer that uses standard office power."

Although trying to offer Microsoft-based systems at the low end and proprietary systems at the high end may make sense for Cray, it's also an option that can be fraught with peril.

Consider the fate of SGI (formerly Silicon Graphics), which tried a similar approach with its Virtual Workstation product line.

For Microsoft, it is yet another step in the company's bid to be taken more seriously at the highest end of the computing market. Its current product, Windows HPC Server 2008, is the successor to the company's inaugural effort, Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.

[EcuadorHomesOnline]

This is cool. Go Cray!

[benjaminstraight]

Have fun with Microsoft.

[AppleSuxLeo]

AAPL has some kind of server product , and according to Leo Laporte , it is not very good. And he is a Mac expert !
Go MSFT ! Go Cray !

[The_Decider]

What stupidity and it looks like desperation. At least spammers are going to like this.

This is an act of desperation. The people buying these machine, are unlike MS customers: they are demanding, intelligent and knowledgeable.

No one who needs these machines like MS, much use any of their products. *nix rules the HPC market for a very good reason: it is flexible, stable and fast.

Look for Cray to diminish in the next year.

[rapier1]

Actually, I'm in the HPC market (I'm a researcher with a major supercomputing research center in Pennsylvania). We've had a couple clusters here that use MS products. MS was very supportive and if I remember correctly we never had any issues with security. We don't have these clusters any more because we retired them a couple of years ago because they reached they're end of life. I don't believe we have any pans to move to Windows HPC because we're focused on different solutions now but it wasn't an issue with the OS. To be honest, more people are going to be concerned about the application availability than the OS. So as long as there is a demand for windows based HPC applications (and there are a few CFD and FEA windows apps) and Globus works properly I don't see any real problems with this.

[rcrusoe]

Cool. This machine might even have enough power to run Vista.

[Penguinisto]

Cray has already filed for bankruptcy before IIRC, and has faded into obscurity and history a long time ago. Much like the original Santa Cruz Organization, sometimes companies outlive their reputation, becoming mere shadows of what they once were.

Some companies manage to escape decrepitude and stay alive as powerhouses of tech (see also IBM and HP), some simply hang on (Xerox, WYSE), and some show promise of resurrection (Novell)...

...but some (SCO, Cray, SGI, Wang, Tandem, Amdahl, Polaroid, etc etc) just fade away after technology first surprises, then surpasses them. They either get bought up, or they simply die.

Sad when it happens (I still have a board from the original Cray-1 hanging at the office @ home), but then you see articles like this - an also-ran in HPC (Microsoft) hitching the name of a has-been (Cray) to its bumper, all in the hopes of getting some buzz. The has-been gets one last shot at media glory, while the also-ran desperately tries to get some shine to its name.

If/when (more likely "if") the partnership actually does more than grand out some buzz, call me. Until then, it's not much more than seeing a losing baseball team pulling a long-retired coach out of the nursing home in the hopes of a miracle.

/P

[rapier1]

I actually work in HPC and I'd have to say that Cray is still a significant player in that field. Not a top player but not a joke either. The XT line has been pretty well received and forms the basis of a number of very powerful machines. While they don't have the same penetration as IBM or HP they do have 3 spots in the top 20 fastest supercomputers. I'd hardly say they're a has been. Diminished? Yes. Out? No.

[Kwasiowusu]

Tandem was taken over by Compaq, when was taken over by HP, which now sells more servers than anyone on the planet.
Plus HPC supercomputers are being made by HP and IBM as well NEC. Not to mention a Microsoft HPC supercomputer ranked # 23 in the TOP500 supercomputers list.

[penguin_hfx]

I am a sysadmin with both hpc and infrastructure gear to look after. SGI and Cray concentrate on the very high end of the market with unique solutions. For example, the altix can scale upto 1024 processing cores in one smp machine with Linux. Cray also has their own low latency interconnect that can scale very well. But this one seems like 8 regular blades
in a compact casing. That is no different than running windows or linux hpc cluster on eight 1U/blade dual socket compute nodes. It would work fine for MPI and with a queuing system. When i heard this news, i thought Cray has done something like SGI did with their altix and numa. They have extensively modified Linux kernel to make it one of the most scalable OS in the world.
I think the last i heard, they had a new altix with 2048 cores in one smp image!! With lots of old climate models still using openmp, their is still a good, but small market for large smp servers.

If this just a regular 8 node cluster, i can't see there is anything special because of the Cray name in it compared to a regular cluster. If they worked with Microsoft to scale it to say a 64 or 128 core smp configuration,
that would have been different. Infact it would have also helped microsoft with scaling up their kernel for future.

[brasscount]

Wow: This means we can process malware really fast!