Cray and Dell are teaming up to bring high-end computing capabilities to workstation users.
The two companies on Nov. 12 announced the Cray CX1-iWS system,
which offers a workstation running Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating
system integrated with an HPC (high-performance computing) cluster
running Windows HPC Server 2008.
The news comes ahead of the Supercomputing 2009 show Nov. 14-20 in Portland, Ore.
Click here to check out the world's fastest supercomputers.
The system, which will be sold exclusively through Dell, is the latest step by Cray and other HPC systems vendors to bring high-end computing to the desktop. In September 2008, Cray launched its CX1 deskside supercomputer, which was followed in July by its CX1-LC system.
The new CX1-iWS is aimed at expanding the reach of Cray’s HPC
technology, including R&D groups at SMBs, companies that have
workloads that need more power than a traditional system can provide,
and IT professionals looking to bring distributed HPC capabilities into
their enterprise.
The system enables users to move their workloads from the
workstation to the compute cluster as needed, according to Ian Miller,
senior vice president of the productivity solutions group and marketing
at Cray.
“The integration of workstation and cluster in one unit, with shared
storage between them, means that users can easily move their jobs from
the workstation to the cluster side of the box without moving their
data or leaving the familiar Microsoft operating system environment,”
Miller said in a statement.
Every system comes with a dual-socket visualization workstation, a
three-node computer cluster, storage and a 16-port Gigabit Ethernet
switch, according to officials with both companies. The workstation and
compute cluster are powered by Intel’s quad-core Xeon 5500 Series
“Nehalem EP” processors.
The workstation offers an Nvidia Quadro graphics card that can
support two HD displays, and will ship only with Windows 7 and Windows
HPC Server 2008.
The system comes in three flavors, with more cluster nodes, memory
and storage being added to the midrange and advanced configurations.
The advanced configuration includes eight 2.93GHz Nehalem EP chips,
24GB of memory per node, 160GB of disk per node, 4 terabytes of
storage, the 16-port GE switch and the Nvidia Quadro FX 5800 graphics
card.
Pricing starts at $40,000.
IT & Network Infrastructure News & Reviews 
