Cray Teams Up with Intel in Supercomputing, Leaves AMD in Agony

Supercomputer builder Cray has signed a multi-year collaboration agreement with Intel regarding high-performance computing systems. Under the new deal, the two partners will develop new multi-core technologies that are alleged to rush the advent of multi-petascale systems.

According to a joint statement released by the two companies, Intel will provide chips and silicon expertise to Cray, while the latter will design and manufacture high performance computing servers based on Intel's processors. The new deal is likely to hurt AMD even more on the CPU market, given the fact that Cray's systems were previously built with AMD's Opteron chips.

"We aren't disclosing specific technologies or products today", said Richard Dracott, general manager of Intel's High Performance Computing Organization. However, Intel claimed that it is working on multi-core technologies and advanced interconnects.

Although there are no official details about the "new technologies" being cooked in Intel's laboratories, the first supercomputer born from the new partnership will see daylight some time between 2010 and 2011.

This time frame indicates that the high-performance computing systems will run with post-Nehalem chips, and might feature Intel's Larrabee multi-core architecture. However, if the estimations prove right, the Larrabee will be just a co-processing element and not the core processing technology (just like Nvidia's Tesla cards in Bull's upcoming supercomputer).

"The two companies are interested in seeing the world's fastest multi-petascale class systems brought to market through a combination of Cray's systems expertise and Intel's processor leadership", said Dracott. "The high end of supercomputing has an insatiable demand for more performance. We believe that the fruits of this collaboration will be used to help solve some of the world's most important humanitarian, medical, scientific and engineering challenges", he continued.

The upcoming Cray supercomputer will come with Intel's technology and will be part of the Cascade project. This secretive program is sponsored by the U.S. government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and pitches at building low-cost supercomputers by 2011.

Cray's new partnership with Intel might have something to do with the fact that AMD delayed its four-core chip in the Barcelona family. Moreover, AMD also delayed shipments of its Budapest processor, which forced Cray to delay its XT4 supercomputer.


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