Each of the Cray CX1000's technologies is best-of-class and can be mixed and matched in a single rack – creating a customized hybrid computing platform to meet a variety of scientific workloads.

It's like you can finally get that square peg through the round hole.

Check out the options:
The CX1000-C offers scale-out computing, offering 18 nodes of dual-socket Intel Xeon 5600 processing in a 7U form factor, including a 36 port QDR IB switch and a 24 port Ethernet switch.

The CX1000-G offers scale-through (GPU) computing, offering nine nodes of dual socket Intel Xeon 5600 computing, accelerated by dual NVIDIA Tesla sockets, with the same switches as above.

The CX1000-S offers scale-up computing with SMP nodes built on Intel’s QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology offering “fat memory” nodes.

The Genesis of the CX1000
The Cray CX1 system was designed to take Cray’s heritage in supercomputing and make that experience available to users with supercomputing needs – but without big research lab budgets. This $15-100K class of user told us they wanted accessible, easy-to-implement HPC. And we responded with the CX1 deskside supercomputer – our first product brought to you in partnership with Intel.

With the power of HPC now in hand, our new worldwide network of users and resellers started reporting back. They wanted Cray to expand the product family such that the CX1 system’s benefits – ease of use, seamless integration – could be extended to more powerful implementations.

We bit.

We’re very pleased to announce the CX1000 series – a product that builds on the CX1 story, but takes it up to 10 Teraflops and beyond. Starting at under $100K, the CX1000 gives users high(brid) performance computing in both software and hardware. The Cray CX1000 series offers the three most important HPC architectures of the next decade – scale out, scale through and scale up. And it also allows you to select from the widest range of industry-standard HPC software through full support of Windows HPC Server 2008, Linux or dual-boot configurations.

So go ahead, eat that cake.

For more information, go to www.cray.com/Products/CX1000/Chassis.aspx

As Cray discovered, the Intel Cluster Ready (ICR) certification program provided real benefits to us and our customers. It gave us a proven protocol for testing and retesting our products to ensure that the entire system (from the hardware to the operating system stack) was healthy. In our first release of the Cray CX1, we discovered that parts of the system stack were in fact not in tip-top shape. The Intel team worked closely with us to diagnose the problem and find the remedy.

What this meant for our customers was a healthy system - right out of the box. ICR is like a system-level checkup that helps us find and fix potential issues before our customers do. Our goal is to deliver the easiest and most productive HPC experience and we consider ICR an ally in that mission.

This has created a chasm between the workstation and its natural upgrade path - the cluster. They operate in different worlds – one is often running Windows, the other Linux. One is managed by the user or department, and the other controlled by IT. One is normally freely available to the individual while the other is dependent on a queue of users wanting time on a shared resource.

So what is the workstation user who needs more power to do? We think the answer is to combine the functionality of the workstation and the cluster into one departmental system – like the Cray CX1. The Cray CX1 supports the NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards for high end graphics performance, delivering workstation capabilities based on Intel 5500 processors. It also supports in one low cost chassis up to 6 additional nodes for a full Intel 5500 based cluster, networked either through Gigabit Ethernet or InfiniBand.

This means the user gets all the power they need in a workstation, but the additional capability to scale-out their jobs in the cluster nodes - achieving cluster performance right there in the office. There is no dependence on IT, and no need to wait in line for a shared resource. The workstation user can get back to "work" with their Cray CX1 workstation and  get the job done faster.

Workstations used to be very cool, and with Intel 5500 processors and a Cray CX1, they are cool once again!

On August 12, 2009, Desktop Engineering magazine announced the Cray CX1-LC deskside supercomputer from Cray Inc.  as the Editor's Pick of the Week ... read more here

Founded in 1995, Lakes Environmental is an IT company offering a complete line of air dispersion modeling, risk assessment, emimssions inventory, and emergency release software, as well as training and custom software services.  Lakes is using their Cray CX1 to run air dispersion modeling reports that help industrial customers reduce air pollutant emissions and enable them to demonstrate real-time compliance with governmental regulations.  Read more about Lakes Environmental and their Cray CX1 at http://www.cray.com/LC.aspx?ref=/Assets/PDF/products/cx1/LakesEnvironmental_CS.pdf

The heartbeat of any economy is its small and medium business sector. Jobs tend to be created quickly in this sector and SMB companies are quick to spot opportunities and move into realizing them. Yet with all this capability and potential, it is also clear that SMB companies have been slow to adopt high performance computing systems to support their research & development functions. There is overwhelming evidence that using HPC systems to simulate reality speeds up R&D and gets products to market faster and cheaper than other approaches. So why the reluctance for SMB organizations to adopt this technology?

The answer is the perceived complexity of HPC systems and a fear of the costs and overheads of adopting this technology. Many SMB companies to do not have IT teams or dedicated computer rooms and need the ability to deploy HPC systems in their existing office infrastructure and without needing to hire an army of computer specialists. The US Council for Competitiveness (www.compete.org) pointed to the need for "ease of everything" as the key to assisting these companies take advantage of the benefits of high performance computing.

Cray took these messages very seriously with the creation of the Cray CX1 deskside supercomputer. It plugs into standard 20amp office power, has noise suppression to make it easy to install in the open office, and comes preinstalled with Windows HPC Server 2008 or Linux. It is also Intel Cluster Ready certified to give SMB customers the confidence that the system will work right out of the box. Add to those capabilities partnerships with the leading software vendors in the HPC space (companies like Ansys, CD-Adapco, Milliman, Simulia and many others) and you have a system ready, willing and able to help SMB companies tackle their R&D challenges and give them the opportunity to come out of this economic downturn with new products or services and a stronger ability to compete.

In addition, several other important capabilities can be evaluated cost effectively on the CX1. For example, the Windows HPC Server 2008 platform is seeing strong market acceptance along with the CX1, and the workstation community see this as a natural evolution from the desktop workstation environment. In addition, users can leverage Cluster Resources Moab dual boot capability to host both Linux and Windows workloads on one CX1 system. Customers who want the simplicity and ease of use of an SMP environment can use ScaleMP's vSMP software on the CX1 platform, and of course GPGPU's are also growing in popularity.

Those are just a few ideas of subjects that are exciting and seeing traction in today's HPC market place. The Cray CX1 team look forward to hearing your comments and ideas for other technologies or applications you would like to see on the platform. Feel free to drop a line to CX1info@cray.com with your ideas or if you have any questions.

Click here to download the product brief