14 DAY TRIAL // Not long after the Cray XT5 “Jaguar” was appointed the most powerful supercomputer, Cray Inc. revealed the new incarnation of the workstation for the next era, namely the Cray CH1-iWS system. More than a simple configuration, the Cray CH1-iWS (iWS stands for integrated Workstation) combines a powerful Microsoft Windows 7 workstation with a fully integrated high-performance computing (HPC) cluster running Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008.
"The Cray CX1-iWS puts the 'work' back in workstation by delivering a powerhouse of functionality to the workstation user or workgroup. The integration of workstation and cluster in one unit, with shared storage between them, means that users can easily move their jobs from the workstation to the cluster side of the box without moving their data or leaving the familiar Microsoft operating system environment," Ian Miller, senior vice president of the productivity solutions group and marketing at Cray, said. "With this new product, Cray expects to provide HPC capability to a wide new audience that includes R&D groups in small and medium-size businesses, organizations needing to solve problems beyond the limits of traditional workstations, and people wanting to implement distributed HPC in the enterprise."
The Cray CX1-iWS system is the newest entry in the Cray CX(TM) product series and joins the Cray CX1-LC(TM) product, which was launched in July 2009. What the leading supercomputer developer succeeded in doing through this cluster/workstation merger was the creation of a deskside form factor system, which combines the workstation's interactivity with the cluster's scale-out performance. The system boasts a highly responsive and interactive workstation environment (with eight cores of Intel® Xeon® processors), while initiating distributed jobs leveraging the integrated cluster resource with an additional 24 cores of Intel Xeon processing power. This adds up to 32 cores (for the advanced configuration) of Intel Xeon, dramatically boosting productivity for engineers, scientists and researchers.
The multiple configurations available are naturally compatible with Windows 7 and will already be equipped with it and Windows HPC Server 2008. They are based on the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series and, for graphics capabilities, the NVIDIA(R) Quadro(R) graphics card that can support two high-definition monitors for visualization. Additionally, for maximum accessibility and usability, each station will include one dual-socket visualization workstation, a three node compute cluster, large storage capabilities (up to 4TB) and a 16-port Gigabit Ethernet switch.
"Combining Windows 7 and Windows HPC Server 2008 in a single, integrated workstation experience will deliver HPC capabilities to a new customer base that sees value in the ease-of-use of the Windows 7 operating system paired with the compute capability of a powerful cluster resource," Vince Mendillo, senior director of high performance computing at Microsoft, added. "The Cray CX1-iWS system is one of the most powerful Windows workstations ever, and a must-have for those looking to realize the benefits of HPC."
"This solution will help bring HPC to an even wider community of scientists and researchers outside the walls of marquee labs and universities," Frank Muehleman, vice president and manager of Dell's North American public-sector business, shared. "Working with partners like Microsoft and Cray, we continue to enable customers to tackle some of [the] society's biggest challenges using industry-standard technologies."
The maximum performance possibilities are packed into the advanced configuration. This includes eight 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon Series 5500 processors with 24GB of memory (6x 4GB DIMMS) per node, 160GB of disk per node, 4TB of storage, the 16-port Gigabit Ethernet switch and an NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 graphics card.
The Cray CX1-iWS is designed to meet the market's need for a new generation of workstations and will be distributed exclusively through Dell with a list price beginning at under $40,000.