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World's Most Powerful Commercially Available Supercomputer Achieves Crucial Results in Weather, Chemistry, Materials Science At Cray Research's Facilities
PR Newswire - October 22, 1997 11:46
SGI %CPR %PDT V%PRN P%PRN
EAGAN, Minn., Oct. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Cray Research, the supercomputing
subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, today announced that the world's most powerful
commercially available supercomputer ever delivered, a CRAY T3E-900(TM)
system, recently achieved milestone results on critical real-world
applications in weather, materials science and chemistry research,
dramatically extending the upper limits of applications performance.
Scientists representing a wide range of disciplines used the 1,328-
processor CRAY T3E-900 system for a three-week period before the system was
shipped to an undisclosed customer site last month. Researchers using the
system each ran codes that could achieve significant advancements in their
fields of science and research. The codes were ported quickly and achieved
crucial results in little time.
"The CRAY T3E(TM) line of supercomputers gives our customers access to
unprecedented levels of scalability," said Irene Qualters, president of Cray
Research and senior vice president of Silicon Graphics. "By providing time on
this enormous CRAY T3E-900 system to researchers, we are not only giving
scientists the chance to achieve significant results, we're also demonstrating
the practical, real-world uses of parallel systems with more than a thousand
processors."
Researchers used the system to run real-world applications at unmatched
levels of performance. Performance data for several specific applications
will be released during the next couple of weeks.
For Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, director of the Center for Analysis and
Prediction of Storms (CAPS) at the University of Oklahoma, the CRAY T3E-900
supercomputer enabled improvements in work with the Advanced Regional
Prediction System (ARPS), the state-of-the-art storm prediction computer
model. The work was an extension of research previously pursued at the
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center on another Cray(R) system.
"In meteorology, getting fast results is critical," Droegemeier said.
"The time we spent on this huge CRAY T3E-900 system gave us valuable insight
into how we can extend our predictions from 30 minutes to up to six hours.
That advanced warning time will save countless lives and billions of dollars."
Other organizations that used the CRAY T3E-900 system include:
-- Center for Non-Linear Dynamics, University of Texas, used MGFlow to
advance the study of thin films in low orbit.
-- The Space Research Department, University of Michigan, used the CRAY
T3E-900 system to develop the first 3-D, multi-scale model of the
heliosphere.
-- High Resolution Limited Area Model Consortium used HIRLAM in the
creation of a numerical short-range weather forecasting system in
Northern Europe.
-- Los Alamos National Laboratory used the Los Alamos Terra Code in its
Earth modeling research.
-- Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) used LAUTREC to
conduct molecular dynamics solutions used in medical research.
-- Pacific Northwest National Labs used NWChem for its research on more
scalable Gaussian chemistry.
The CRAY T3E-900 system enables Cray customers to achieve results not
possible with any other system. "The CRAY T3E-900 supercomputer provides an
environment for very easy applications scaling, creating enormous implications
for a number of industries," said Qualters. "As we move toward the future, we
are going to see a number of industries, including energy and petroleum,
university research and government, deploy computers of this size."
Cray Research, the supercomputing subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(NYSE: SGI), provides the leading supercomputing tools and services to help
solve customers' most challenging problems.
Cray is a registered trademark, and CRAY T3E and CRAY T3E-900 are
trademarks, of Cray Research. Silicon Graphics is a registered trademark of
Silicon Graphics, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property
of their respective owners.
All Cray Research Press Materials are available on the World Wide Web via
cray.com
Facts on the 1,328-Processor CRAY T3E-900 System
Total Number of PEs in the System 1,328
Memory Size per PE 128 MB per dedicated PE
Peak System FLOPS Rate 1.195 Teraflops
Cooling Technology Liquid Cooling (LC)
Total Number of Cabinets 5 LC Cabinets
Weight of Full LC Cabinet 4,500 pounds
Total 5 Cabinet System Weight 22,500 pounds
Footprint of Single LC Cabinet 40" x 83"
Height of LC Cabinet 79"
SOURCE Cray Research, Inc.
/CONTACT: Erik Huseby, Media 612-841-6136, of Shandwick for Cray
Research, Inc./
/NOTE TO EDITORS: This release, along with past Cray Research releases
beginning April 19, 1995 is available by fax at no charge by calling Company
News on Call at 800-758-5804 and entering the code 211550/
/Company News On-Call: prnewswire.com or fax, 800-758-5804,
ext. 211550/
/Web site: cray.com
(SGI)
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