Cray to Install China's First Cray XC30 Supercomputer at Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Mar 19, 2014) - Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) today announced the Company has been awarded a contract to provide the Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital (HKSH) with a Cray® XC30™ supercomputer -- the first XC30 system in China. One of the largest private hospitals in Hong Kong, HKSH will use its Cray XC30 system to further medical research in the areas of bioinformatics and next generation sequencing (NGS).

"The Cray supercomputer will advance our mission to provide the best care for our patients and improved outcomes for people worldwide," said Mr. Wyman Li, Manager (Administration) of HKSH. "The XC30 supercomputer will greatly increase our gene sequencing capabilities, enabling us to deliver healthcare innovations even faster."

The Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital has a long tradition of using cutting edge medical science and innovative technologies to provide quality medical care for its patients, and HKSH chose Cray for its leadership position in life sciences and supercomputing. The Cray life sciences and performance teams worked closely with the high performance computing (HPC) team at HKSH to understand the unique application requirements and help optimize codes to achieve aggressive performance metrics. 

"Recent progress in DNA sequencing technology has yielded a new class of devices that allow for the analysis of genetic material with unprecedented speed and efficiency, and this next-generation technology combined with the state-of-the-art supercomputing capabilities of the Cray XC30 system will be a powerful resource for HKSH," said Mr. Andrew Wyatt Cray vice president, APMEA. "HKSH is one of the most prestigious and internationally accredited private hospitals in China, and we are honored that the country's first Cray XC30 supercomputer will power the innovative life sciences research being pioneered by the researchers at HKSH."

Previously code-named "Cascade," the Cray XC30 supercomputers are Cray's most advanced HPC systems and engineered to meet the performance challenges of today's HPC users. Special features of the Cray XC30 and Cray XC30-AC™ supercomputers include: the Aries system interconnect; a Dragonfly network topology that frees applications from locality constraints; innovative cooling systems to lower customers' total cost of ownership; the next-generation of the scalable, high performance Cray Linux Environment supporting a wide range of applications; Cray's HPC optimized programming environment, and the ability to handle a wide variety of processor types.