Cray plans Alpha Linux supercluster systemsNew York 29 February 2001 Cray says it will lanch Alpha Linux supercluster systems in the coming months and is scheduled to begin shipping in the mid-2001 timeframe. The company has received an early order agreement from BioNumerik Pharmaceuticals and expects to announce multiple orders by the time of the product launch.
Cray will combine production-oriented architecture,
Unicos operating environment and advanced system
software with Linux, the latest Alpha server technology from API
NetWorks, and the scalable Myrinet cluster-interconnect network
from Myricom.
The data center capabilities, will include high availability
(dynamic reconfigurability, concurrent maintenance, warm boot,
hot swap); global checkpoint/restart (in the event of a system
interrupt, saves all users' work and smoothly continues jobs
upon recovery); global resource management; single system
image (SSI) even in the largest system sizes (thousands of
processors); efficient job scheduling, prioritization and
accounting.
``The SuperCluster program is a strategic initiative that
complements our existing products and plans,'' Rottsolk said. ``Because
the SuperCluster heavily exploits third-party technology, it requires
a relatively modest R&D investment. It will carry on the tradition of
our industry-leading Cray T3E platform by targeting scalar codes and
workloads, but will not surpass the T3E's capabilities until the T3E
is no longer producing meaningful revenue from product sales. Finally,
the SuperCluster is not expected to materially affect revenue for our
`extreme performance' products: the Cray MTA-2 multithreaded
supercomputer due out in mid- to late 2001, or our Cray SV2 vector
supercomputer due out in the second half of 2002,'' he said.
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