Cray's Next-Generation "Shasta" Supercomputer Chosen for Argonne National Laboratory's "Aurora" System

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Apr 9, 2015) -  Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) today announced that it has been awarded a subcontract from Intel to integrate and deliver two next-generation supercomputers and associated storage at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) at Argonne National Laboratory.

The Cray systems will be built and delivered as part of the DOE's initiative to build state-of-the art supercomputers through the joint Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (CORAL) program.

The flagship system, to be called "Aurora," will be based on the next-generation Cray supercomputer, code-named "Shasta," the successor to the current, industry-leading Cray® XC™ line of supercomputers. Aurora will utilize Intel's HPC scalable system framework, is expected to have a peak performance of 180 petaflops and is scheduled for delivery in 2018. This marks the first selection for a next-generation Cray Shasta supercomputer.

"The ALCF is focused on providing the computational science community with advanced supercomputing systems capable of achieving important breakthroughs in science and engineering, and the Aurora system is a significant continuation of our mission," said Rick Stevens, Associate Laboratory Director for Argonne National Laboratory. "The scalable architecture of Cray's next-generation Shasta system combined with Intel's advanced processing technologies ensures the Aurora system will be a valuable resource for computational science and engineering."

Cray and Intel will provide ALCF with a second system, to be called "Theta," which will be a Cray XC series supercomputer and is expected to be delivered in 2016. Theta will be an early production system for Argonne and will have a peak performance of more than 8 petaflops. Cray also has options to provide next-generation, high-performance parallel storage systems for both the Theta and Aurora systems. 

"We take great pride in building powerful supercomputers for advancing scientific discovery, and through our collaboration with Intel and Argonne, we expect the Aurora system will provide the DOE user community with the most powerful supercomputer we will have ever built," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "Aurora also has added significance for us as it will be based on our next-generation Shasta system - the supercomputing heir to our Cray XC series, which is our most successful system ever and a leader in the supercomputing market today. Our Shasta platform will merge the best technologies from our XC line, as well as from our Cray CS line of cluster supercomputers, into a truly adaptive computing framework across both supercomputing and analytics workloads. We are very excited to have been selected by Intel to partner with them to build this unique, ground-breaking system for Argonne."