ACADEMIA
UK National HPC Service Based on Cray Supercomputing Technology
Cray, University of Edinburgh Unveil Cray Supercomputer to Aid Nation's Researchers: Cray and Scotland's University of Edinburgh today unveiled the new Cray XT4 supercomputer that will greatly assist the UK's researchers and enable scientific advancements and breakthroughs in a range of fields and disciplines. Established to provide next-generation high performance computing (HPC) service for the United Kingdom's academic community, today's unveiling of the Cray supercomputer officially launches the first phase of the UK's High-End Computing Terascale Resource (HECToR) project. 
HECToR was initiated and funded by the UK's Research Councils led by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Cray was selected for the multi-stage project that will provide researchers at universities across the UK access to industry-leading HPC resources. The latter phases will include the integration of new innovative Cray technologies such as the new Cray X2 system in 2008 and a very powerful next-generation Cray massively parallel processor (MPP) supercomputer in 2009. The delivery of the Cray X2 system in 2008 will make HECToR the first recipient of a Cray XT5h system -- the industry's first integrated hybrid supercomputer.
"The Research Councils' commitment to providing researchers with industry leading computing resources will enable scientific and engineering breakthroughs across many key disciplines among the UK's research community," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "We are pleased to play a key role in this important effort and are working closely to help the HECToR team leverage our advanced technologies to achieve their goals. It's a very exciting time."
The Cray XT4 system is an MPP system that provides unrivaled sustained performance by balancing performance between powerful processors, memory, interconnect, and I/O. Both hardware and software are designed to scale to more than 120,000 processor cores and over one petaflops of peak performance.
"The University of Edinburgh is an internationally renowned center for academic excellence and the site of many world-class research achievements," said Professor Sir Timothy O'Shea, Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. "HPC is increasingly indispensable to any competitive research program and will allow researchers across the United Kingdom to satisfy the most demanding scientific goals and push the boundaries of their ambitions. The strong partnership and efforts of Cray and the University of Edinburgh, coupled with the vision of EPSRC, will ensure the success of HECToR."
Housed in the University's Advanced Computing Facility, the system will support researchers in a wide range of fields including materials simulation, computational chemistry, disaster simulation and emergency response, biomolecular science and engineering modeling.
As part of HECToR, Cray has established a Cray Center of Excellence. This Center of Excellence will provide in-depth support and direction for both current and future Cray HPC platforms in the HECToR service through advanced research in porting codes, improving scalability of applications, developing algorithms and system software tools and optimizing workload and I/O.
"This is the first Cray Center of Excellence in Europe and it is another significant step forward in growing Cray's presence and building an R&D base for Cray in Europe," said Dr. Ulla Thiel, vice president of Cray Europe. "The Cray Center of Excellence in Edinburgh will provide a unique infrastructure to foster a climate of information exchange and collaboration within the HECToR community and amongst the other Cray Centers of Excellence around the world. We anticipate huge benefits to the nation's researchers and HPC users everywhere from this collaboration."
HECToR was initiated and funded by the UK's Research Councils led by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Cray was selected for the multi-stage project that will provide researchers at universities across the UK access to industry-leading HPC resources. The latter phases will include the integration of new innovative Cray technologies such as the new Cray X2 system in 2008 and a very powerful next-generation Cray massively parallel processor (MPP) supercomputer in 2009. The delivery of the Cray X2 system in 2008 will make HECToR the first recipient of a Cray XT5h system -- the industry's first integrated hybrid supercomputer.
"The Research Councils' commitment to providing researchers with industry leading computing resources will enable scientific and engineering breakthroughs across many key disciplines among the UK's research community," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "We are pleased to play a key role in this important effort and are working closely to help the HECToR team leverage our advanced technologies to achieve their goals. It's a very exciting time."
The Cray XT4 system is an MPP system that provides unrivaled sustained performance by balancing performance between powerful processors, memory, interconnect, and I/O. Both hardware and software are designed to scale to more than 120,000 processor cores and over one petaflops of peak performance.
"The University of Edinburgh is an internationally renowned center for academic excellence and the site of many world-class research achievements," said Professor Sir Timothy O'Shea, Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. "HPC is increasingly indispensable to any competitive research program and will allow researchers across the United Kingdom to satisfy the most demanding scientific goals and push the boundaries of their ambitions. The strong partnership and efforts of Cray and the University of Edinburgh, coupled with the vision of EPSRC, will ensure the success of HECToR."
Housed in the University's Advanced Computing Facility, the system will support researchers in a wide range of fields including materials simulation, computational chemistry, disaster simulation and emergency response, biomolecular science and engineering modeling.
As part of HECToR, Cray has established a Cray Center of Excellence. This Center of Excellence will provide in-depth support and direction for both current and future Cray HPC platforms in the HECToR service through advanced research in porting codes, improving scalability of applications, developing algorithms and system software tools and optimizing workload and I/O.
"This is the first Cray Center of Excellence in Europe and it is another significant step forward in growing Cray's presence and building an R&D base for Cray in Europe," said Dr. Ulla Thiel, vice president of Cray Europe. "The Cray Center of Excellence in Edinburgh will provide a unique infrastructure to foster a climate of information exchange and collaboration within the HECToR community and amongst the other Cray Centers of Excellence around the world. We anticipate huge benefits to the nation's researchers and HPC users everywhere from this collaboration." 