Cray has announced it has been awarded a contract to deliver a Cray CS400 cluster supercomputer to the Laboratory Computing Resource Center (LCRC) at Argonne National Laboratory.
The new Cray system will serve as the Centre’s flagship cluster, and in continuing with LCRC’s theme of jazz-music inspired computer names, the Cray CS400 system is named ‘Bebop’.
Argonne National Laboratory established the LCRC in 2002 to enable and promote the use of high-performance computing (HPC) across the Laboratory in support of its varied research missions. The LCRC is available to the entire Argonne user community and its integrated computing and data resources will include the new 1.5 petaflop Cray CS400 system. These computing systems are stepping stones in the development of petascale codes that will run on systems such as Theta, a Cray XC40 supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF).
‘At its core, the mission of the LCRC is to provide Argonne’s users with supercomputing resources that expand research horizons, provide the training and assistance for more productive research projects, and enable larger and more complex studies,’ said Rick Stevens, associate laboratory director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences. ‘Supercomputers are important tools for the Laboratory’s efforts in many areas, including energy storage, new materials, nuclear energy, climate change, and efficient transportation.’
‘Cray supercomputers continue to power the amazing research conducted by the Argonne user community, and we are honoured that the LCRC has selected a Cray CS400 as the next flagship system for this important program,’ said Peter Ungaro, president, and CEO of Cray. ‘We are proud of our ongoing partnership with Argonne, and with Theta and the upcoming Aurora system, and now Bebop, we look forward to an exciting future with this important customer.’
The Cray CS400 cluster supercomputers are scalable, flexible systems built from industry-standard technologies into a unified, fully-integrated system. Available with air- or liquid-cooled configurations, Cray CS400 systems provide superior price/performance, energy efficiency, and configuration flexibility. The Cray CS400 systems are integrated with Cray’s HPC software stack and include software tools compatible with most open source and commercial compilers, schedulers, and libraries.
The Cray CS400 system at the LCRC is expected to be put into production in mid-2017.
