Apr 14 2009
Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) today announced that the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) has put the country's first Cray XT5 supercomputer into production. The new system features Cray's ECOphlex(TM) liquid-cooling technology and is approximately 11 times faster than the Cray XT3(TM) supercomputer installed at JAIST in 2005.
JAIST, one of Japan's premier academic research centers, is using its new Cray XT5 supercomputer as the main system for its high-performance computing facility. With peak performance of 19.6 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second), the system is speeding advances in the development of new algorithms for highly parallel computers, large-scale simulations in nanotechnology, biomechanics and a wide range of other scientific disciplines.
"The most important reason for our introduction of the new Cray XT5 supercomputer was our need to improve operating efficiency -- not to mention our need to streamline the research environment," said Teruo Matsuzawa, Ph.D., director of the JAIST Center for Information Science. "Cray's liquid-cooling technology is the best match for these needs and sits well with our principle of willingly evaluating state-of-the-art technologies. We plan to leverage the XT5 to its fullest potential as the main system for our R&D in various disciplines."
The three-cabinet, Cray XT5 system at JAIST features a 2,048-core central processing unit (CPU), which is the first use of AMD's "Shanghai" quad-core processors in a Cray XT(TM) supercomputer. The new system also features 4 TBs of main memory and 96 TBs of storage.
"The Cray XT5 supercomputer now operating at JAIST is a leap forward in data center efficiency with its densely implemented CPUs and ECOphlex liquid-cooling system," said Mamoru Nakano, president of Cray Japan. "We are also delighted that this delivery is made even more memorable by the fact that it is the world's first use of AMD's latest processors in a Cray XT system. We have high expectations that in the near future such leading technologies produced by Cray will be widely used by many more companies and academic institutions."