AMD Opteron 6200 CPUs Power Cray’s New Midrange Supercomputers

Cray, one of the most renowned names in the HPC market, has just announced that the company has revamped its system lineup with a series of new affordably priced machines, targeting the midrange supercomputing market.

Released by the company into the Cray XE6m and Cray XK6m lines, the new systems are based on AMD’s Opteron 6200 processors, which can be seconded by Nvidia’s Tesla general purpose GPUs.

For connectivity purposes Cary opted for its own Gemini high-speed interconnect, while on the software side of things the supercomputers run Cray Linux Environment.

Furthermore, the new offerings feature enhancements to Cray's Cluster Compatibility Mode (CCM), which gives customers the ability to run applications from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) without modification.

Introduced in April 2010, CCM is a fully standard x86 Linux environment that allows for simple, out-of-the box installation and running of parallel ISV applications without porting, re-linking or recompilation.

"The Cray CX line was a success for us as it allowed us to reach a new segment of users in a broader set of industries," said Peg Williams, Cray's senior vice president of high performance computing systems.

"For some time, customers have been looking for us to combine the strengths of both of our product offerings into a single architecture and we've now accomplished that goal.

“By adding the final pieces to the puzzle -- low starting prices, broad ISV applications support, scalability and a tightly integrated architecture -- we now have an ideal supercomputing product to successfully meet the needs of the midrange market," concluded the company’s rep.

The Cray XE6m and Cray XK6m systems are available for purchase as we speak, with prices starting at $200,000, slightly more than 150,000 EUR.

According to the company, these new systems target researchers, scientists and engineers, as well as customers who were previously served by the Cray CX line.