Cray for sale

Chippewa falls 18 Aug 99 As part of its major restructuring, SGI puts all its Cray supercomputer developments in a separate business unit. SGI said it is in active discussions with other companies to assume the operation of the Cray business through a partnership or other transaction. The Cray business unit, based in Chippewa Falls and Eagan, will be responsible for the Cray T90, the new Cray SV1 and the next-generation Cray SV2 vector supercomputer products, along with the Cray T3E scalable parallel system.

In the latest (June 1999) independent ranking of the "World's Top 500 Supercomputer Sites," Cray systems accounted for five of the top 10, and 26 of the top 50 supercomputers in the world.

The Cray business represents less than 10 percent of SGI's overall revenue, based on the quarter ended June 30, 1999.

Along with the Cray supercomputer products, the new unit will manage advanced packaging, cooling and CMOS technologies; scalable software, including the UNICOS and UNICOS/mk operating systems; and the CF90 and SHMEM programming environments.

"The Cray business focuses on serving the special requirements of vector supercomputing customers," said Rick Belluzzo, chairman and CEO. "This is an important business that is complementary to SGI's scalable server business, but the vector market has its own distinct product cycles, application partners and sales and service model. We have decided that pursuing these agendas separately but in coordination creates the best opportunity for the success of both businesses. We will continue to have a close relationship with the business since the forthcoming Cray SV2 product line will be built in conjunction with SGI's next-generation SN server platform technology. And SGI itself will continue to be a leader in supercomputing with our scalable ccNUMA technology."

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