SEATTLE, WA, Apr 21, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Global supercomputer leader
Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) today announced it has signed a contract with the Foundation for Space Technology, Applications and Science (FUNCATE), which is responsible for the procurement of high performance computers in Brazil. The purpose of the contract is to provide the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) with a new Cray
XT6 supercomputer for weather forecasts and climate studies. INPE is the company's first Cray XT customer in Brazil and, upon installation of the new Cray
XT6 system, the country will be home to one of the largest numerical weather prediction and climate research centers in the world.
One of INPE's missions is to provide Brazil with studies on climate change and to provide state-of-the-art weather, seasonal climate and environmental forecasts while having the scientific and technological capacity to improve these forecasts on an ongoing basis. To achieve this objective, INPE has been developing, implementing and operating numerical models for climate and weather forecasting, using cutting-edge computing and supercomputing tools.
"The INPE scientific team asserts that continued increase in supercomputing capacity is paramount to the advancement of simulation capabilities and improvement in forecast quality," said Haroldo Fraga de Campos Velho, Associate Director for Space and Environment, INPE. "The Cray
XT6 supercomputer is designed to support the most challenging high performance computing workloads in demanding operational environments, and INPE scientists are looking forward to applying the system's computational resources in their simulations of atmospheric phenomena. The new Cray supercomputer will meet the immediate need for more accurate simulations, which are important to weather, climate and environmental forecasting, and to the study of climate change supporting the National and FAPESP research networks."
Consisting of products and multi-year services, the contract is valued at more than $20 million and the system is expected to go into production in late 2010. The contract for INPE is another example of Cray's strength in the earth sciences segment, and adds to the company's recent announcements of supercomputing contracts with some of the world's most prestigious weather and climate research centers. The company recently announced contract wins with the Korea Meteorological Administration, the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
"We are honored that INPE chose Cray to deliver the supercomputing capabilities necessary for its scientists and researchers to perform critical weather predictions," said Barry Bolding, Cray's vice president of scalable systems. "Cray supercomputers excel at large-scale simulations, and the Cray
XT6 system is designed to meet the demanding requirements of operational weather forecasting and climate research -- scientific areas that rely heavily on Cray's performance, scalability and reliability."
Announced in November 2009, the Cray
XT6 supercomputer is designed to provide unprecedented scalability with exceptional manageability, attractive cost of ownership and broad application support to produce the world's most productive general-purpose supercomputer. The compute blade in the Cray
XT6 system features four compute nodes designed for high scalability in a small footprint and can be configured with up to 96 processor cores per blade or more than 2,300 processor cores per cabinet. Each compute node is composed of two AMD Opteron(TM) 6100 Series processors (the eight and 12-core "Maranello" platform), each coupled with its own memory and dedicated Cray Seastar2+ interconnect.
About the Cray XT Supercomputer Series As the world's most scalable Linux supercomputer, the Cray XT product line combines unprecedented sustained application performance with exceptional manageability and reliability, and lower cost of ownership for customers. Using powerful AMD Opteron(TM) processors, the Cray XT line is optimized for memory-intensive and/or compute-biased workloads. The successful Cray XT product line features ECOphlex technology -- packaging and design features that promote energy savings along two dimensions: by enabling greater system density and by reducing the need for expensive air cooling and air conditioners. Additionally, the Cray Linux Environment enables optimized performance across a broader range of applications.
About INPE INPE is the National Institute for Space Research (Brazil). The Institute is responsible for developing Brazilian satellites, Earth Observation (with operational mission for monitoring the Amazonian region), scientific studies in space science, and it has a complex of scientific laboratories for helping in its missions. INPE has the mission to provide the weather forecasting for the country (CPTEC: Center for Weather Prediction and Climate Studies), and climate change studies (CST: Center of Earth System Science). The CPTEC/INPE is the site for the supercomputer facility located in Cachoeira Paulista, Sao Paulo.
About Cray Inc. As a global leader in supercomputing, Cray provides highly advanced supercomputers and world-class services and support to government, industry and academia. Cray technology is designed to enable scientists and engineers to achieve remarkable breakthroughs by accelerating performance, improving efficiency and extending the capabilities of their most demanding applications. Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing vision is focused on delivering innovative next-generation products that integrate diverse processing technologies into a unified architecture, allowing customers to surpass today's limitations and meeting the market's continued demand for realized performance. Go to
www.cray.com for more information.
Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, including, but not limited to, statements related to Cray's ability to deliver the system required by INPE by late 2010 and that meets the INPE's needs. These statements involve current expectations, forecasts of future events and other statements that are not historical facts. Inaccurate assumptions and known and unknown risks and uncertainties can affect the accuracy of forward-looking statements and cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could affect actual future events or results include, but are not limited to, the risk that the system required by INPE is not delivered in a timely fashion or does not perform as expected and such other risks as identified in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009, and from time to time in other reports filed by Cray with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. You should not rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this release. Cray undertakes no duty to publicly announce or report revisions to these statements as new information becomes available that may change the Company's expectations.
Cray is a registered trademark of Cray Inc. in the United State and other countries, and Cray
XT6, Cray XT, SeaStar2+, ECOphlex and Cray Linux Environment are trademarks of Cray Inc. Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
