Cray Unleashes XK6 Supercomputer with AMD Interlagos Processors

Cray, a company well renowned for its high-performance supercomputers, has just announced the launch of the Cray XK6 HPC system, which pairs together AMD's upcoming Interlagos processors with Nvidia Tesla 2000-series GPGPU compute cards.

The Cray XK6 supercomputer is designed using a modular approach and is available in both single and multi-cabinet configurations.

Each one of these cabinets can hold up to 96 AMD Interlagos processors and 96 Nvidia Tesla X2090-series compute cards, and Cray estimates that it can reach a peak performance of 70TFLOPS.

The cabinets that form the XK6 supercomputer are linked together using Cray's high-performance Gemini interconnect.

AMD Interlagos processors are based on the company's upcoming Bulldozer architecture, can pack up to 16 processing cores, include a quad-channel memory controller and are compatible with the G34 socket.

The Cray XK6 supercomputer is shipped together with a unified x86/GPU programming environment that includes various tools, libraries, compilers and third-party software.

“Every aspect of the Cray XK6 has been engineered to meet the real-world performance demands of researchers and scientists tasked with solving the world's grand challenges,” said Barry Bolding, vice president of Cray's product division.

“Cray has a long history of working with accelerators in our vector technologies.

“We are leveraging this expertise to create a scalable hybrid supercomputer -- and the associated first-generation of a unified x86/GPU programming environment -- that will allow the system to more productively meet the scientific challenges of today and tomorrow,” concluded the company's rep.

Upgradeable from Cray XT4, Cray XT5, Cray XT6 or Cray XE6 systems, the XK6 system is expected to be available in the second half of 2011.

Cray's first customer for the new XK6 system is the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Manno, Switzerland, which has contracted the company to upgrade its Cray XE6m machine, nicknamed "Piz Palu," to a multi-cabinet XK6 supercomputer.