Cray Supercomputers to be Based on AMD Opterons

PsychicX writes "AMD and Cray have announced an agreement to base Cray supercomputers on AMD's Opteron line until the end of the decade, and to collaborate on Cray's 2006 proposal for Phase 3 of the federal government's DARPA HPCS (High Productivity Computing Systems) program. Cray already offers the XT3 and XD1 supercomputers based on Opteron."

Comments

excellent

[harryoyster]

That is excellent news for AMD even though there wont be massive volumes compared to home markets it will still be some heavy industry weight backing the AMD opteron processor. Hopefully AMD will adopt some additional features that could make the Opteron even better suited to the super computer market.

Re:excellent

[Aardpig]

Only the name Cray remains, not the old-time reputation.

That's not quite true; they still sell Cray-specific technology. One of my colleagues has just bought a small 24-core Opteron system. Each node contains two dual-core processors, and the 6 nodes are linked together by 80 Gb/s Craylink cables. I think this interlink technology is also licensed to SGI for use in their Origin computers.

Re:...and now some real numbers

[Vengeance]

Hrmmm. In six months AMD went from 25 systems on the list to 55 systems on the list, and you think Intel is doing well?

Let's extrapolate for a moment, shall we? I'll even do Intel a favor and clamp down on the AMD increases each time. Basically, AMD more than doubled their share of this elite group in six months' time.

Six months from now, they've almost doubled to 100 systems.

Twelve months from now, slowing down and growing only 75%, they've got 175 systems.

Two years in the future, with even more slowing down of their growth, 300 systems on the list are AMD. I wonder whether the preponderance of that growth comes from the current 400-odd Intel machines or from the 73 IBM setups...

Likely? Maybe not. Possible? Yeah, it just might be.

Re:...and now some real numbers

[hattig]

On November 2004 the list had 84 computers with Itanium 2 processors. In June 2005, the number shrunk to 79.

Now only 46 computers contain Itanium 2 chips according to the latest list, released Monday.

That's quite a collapse. Intel is propping up their high-end systems with volcano-simulator Xeons?

Meanwhile, the number of supercomputers using Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron chips has increased. A total of 55 Opteron-based computers made the list, up from 25 in June. (Opterons were found in just 29 computers on the November 2004 list.)

A near doubling in a year. And that's with AMD's first real server standard processor. HORUS comes out today, that'll put AMD into the 32 and 64 core marketplace. Not bad for a company with 0 server marketshare, nevermind Top500 systems two years ago.

As for the rest of your troll, I think most of the people here are clever enough to see it for what it is.

Re:Opteron is not NexGen's tech

[sgt scrub]

Actually the K7 was designed with most of the DEC technology. I'm not knocking AMD though. I've used them since the 386 days. I think they have surpassed the Alpha --me ducks-- in speed and efficiency, though I still wouldn't give up my 433a withought a fist fight.

Their bus arch and chipset tech is the most interesting. (if someone has proof that AMD didn't design this it better be solid). This attention from Cray, and the super computer people in general, is due more to this success. AMD has the best design and it shows. It is one thing to buy schetches of a something and another to make it fly this good.

More to the point regarding Cray is their XD1. THAT is a cool machine! I was looking around at different FPGA stuff and almost shorted my keyboard with drool. Damn, I wish I was rich. -sniffle-