Most excellent!!!
http://www.spikynorman.dsl.pipex.com...NCE.950313.txt
According to that article, the Cray J932 can contain up to 32
processors and run 6.4 gflops. That's a whole lotta power for the $99
opening bid... assuming the system is in complete working condition.
If it's not, good luck getting parts!
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Cray/Media: Steve Conway, 612/683-7133
Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538
Cray/Financial: Brad Allen, 612/683-7395
CRAY RESEARCH DOUBLES TOP PERFORMANCE OF FAST-
SELLING CRAY J90 PRODUCT LINE
New CRAY J932 UNIX-Based Systems Scale Low-Cost
Supercomputer Line Up To 32 Processors, 6.4 Billion
Calculations Per Second
DALLAS, March 13, 1995 -- At the UniForum 95 open
computing conference, Cray Research, Inc. (NYSE: CYR)
announced today its new CRAY J932 supercomputer that
doubles the maximum performance of the company's fastest-
selling product line ever -- the CRAY J90 series of low-cost,
UNIX-based supercomputer systems.
The new CRAY J932 products are air-cooled, compact
supercomputer systems with 16 to 32 processors that provide
up to 6.4 billion calculations per second (gigaflops) of peak
computing speed -- twice the maximum offered in the
previously announced, binary-compatible CRAY J916 systems,
Cray officials said. The CRAY J932 systems, slated to begin
shipping in second-quarter of this year, are priced in the U.S.
from under $1 million to about $2.6 million.
Cray reported it has already received 11 advance orders for the
new CRAY J932 systems. The orders are from British Gas,
London, England; Howard University, Washington D.C.; Penn
State University, University Park, Penn.; University Groningen,
The Netherlands; and two German organizations, Konrad-Zuse-
Zentrum fuer Informationstechnik Berlin (Konrad-Zuse Center
for Information Technology Berlin), and the Christian-
Albrechts-Universitaet zu Kiel (University of Kiel). An
additional undisclosed customer has ordered five CRAY J932
systems that will be clustered using Cray Research's
SuperCluster software environment. Terms were not
disclosed.
The CRAY J90 Series is aimed at small- to mid-sized
organizations, or departments within larger organizations,
that do scientific and technical simulation work in the
government, industrial and university sectors. These Cray
systems are designed to operate as simulation servers for
large, complex problems that exhaust the capabilities of
workstations and workstation-based server products. A single
CRAY J932 system's large, real central memory -- up to eight
gigabytes -- can handle heavy workloads that would exhaust
the cache memory and memory bandwidths of uniprocessor
workstations, Cray said.
"Our J90 customers have anywhere from a few users to more
than a hundred running a wide range of third-party and
proprietary applications," said Robert H. Ewald president and
chief operating officer of Cray Research. "Cray Research's
complete catalogue of more than 600 third-party
supercomputer applications is available on these systems,
compared with far fewer application offerings on competing
systems. The CRAY J90 systems are the most general-purpose
supercomputers in their price class."
The company has captured about 100 orders for the CRAY J916
supercomputer, the smaller system in the series that was
announced in September 1994, Ewald said. The CRAY J916
systems begin volume shipments this month, at U.S. list prices
ranging from $225,000 to $1.5 million for systems with four
to 16 processors and up to 3.2 gigaflops of peak performance.
He said nearly 40 percent of the 110 CRAY J90 Series orders
are from new customers.
"With the volume of CRAY J90 Series orders already in hand,
we are well on our way to, in 1995, substantially increasing
Cray Research's share in the growing open systems market for
high-performance simulation servers," Ewald said.
According to Gary Smaby, president of Smaby Group, Inc., a
high-performance computing (HPC) analyst firm in Minneapolis,
"Early order activity leads us to believe that with the J90
Series, Cray has finally hit on a compelling combination of
price, performance and application breadth to address the sub-
$2 million HPC server market. While Cray historically has
dominated the market for high-end enterprise supercomputers,
the company has not had a significant presence in this price
tier. We expect the J90 Series to finally put Cray on the map
in this billion dollar, 30+ percent growth market tier,
propelling the company from a mere three percent market
share in 1994 to a respectable 11 percent by year end.
"In our view, the catalyst will be the ability of CRAY J90
Series users to gain plug and play' access to Cray's impressive
third-party applications library -- including the fifty or so key
codes which drive the majority of the HPC systems sales in
this price range."
Ewald said that the CRAY J90 Series systems are scaled down
versions of Cray Research's proven supercomputing technology
combined with the cost advantages of CMOS. To maintain the
product line's unrivaled performance on real-world
applications -- which average 60 to 70 percent of peak
processor speed -- Cray has doubled the maximum memory
bandwidth over the CRAY J916 system to 51.2 billion bytes
(gigabytes) per second in the CRAY J932 system. This memory
bandwidth is more than 20 times faster than similarly priced
competing products and maintains Cray's leadership in high-
bandwidth computing, Ewald said.
The new systems are based on custom RISC microprocessors
that Cray designed and has manufactured by an undisclosed
outside vendor, Ewald said. The microprocessor is two CMOS
ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) with
approximately 800,000 cells per chip. The microprocessor is
an innovative design that reduces the Cray Research central
processing unit (CPU) -- previously consisting of hundreds of
chips and multiple multi-layered printed circuit boards -- to
two powerful processor chips and a handful of supporting
chips, he said.
"All Cray supercomputers to date have been based on RISC
architecture. In fact, in the world of supercomputing, the Cray
RISC architecture is the most commonly used," Ewald said.
"By applying the price/performance advantages of CMOS to our
proven architecture, our new J90 line features RISC
microprocessors tuned specifically for hundreds of
supercomputing applications."
Ewald said the CRAY J932 supercomputers:
- Can be installed in an office environment with standard air
conditioning.
- Offer sustained multiple gigaflops on a wide range of
applications for under $1.5 million.
- Are compatible with workstations and designed to operate
in a client/server environment. As a central simulation
server, the CRAY J932 supercomputer is an open system and
easily connects to workstation devices made by a variety of
suppliers. It also supports the most popular workstation
data formats with transparent, automatic data conversion.
- Run the same standard UNIX operating system (UNICOS) as
larger Cray systems, with multi-user features and other
enhancements for the demanding high-end computing
market.
- Have unmatched, flexible scaling features. Scalability of
competing low-cost supercomputers is limited by adding
another processor or workstation to the cluster. Many of
these products rely on the low speeds of ethernet as their
"system" interconnect and offer limited scalability, as they
are confined to low-end configurations when total system
performance is considered. With the CRAY J932 system's
balanced design and leading bandwidth, customers can
easily and inexpensively add processors at $30,000 each
(U.S. list price) in a single system chassis and gain
significantly more from the addition of the processors.
- Are based on Cray Research supercomputer technology for
industry-leading "delivered" price/performance. Because
of the system's leading bandwidth of 51.2 gigabytes per
second, the sustained-to-peak ratio for this system on a
wide range of application far exceeds the competition. Per
processor the system achieves from 60-70 percent of its
peak speed of 200 megaflops (million floating-point
operations per second).
- Can be clustered with Cray's SuperCluster software
environment, providing virtually unlimited, versatile
capacity upgrades and total peak capabilities as high as 200
gigaflops. With this Cray software, customers can link
multiple supercomputers for a tightly integrated
distributed memory environment to tackle even larger
workloads.
Cray today also announced that it has received Advanced
Systems Magazine's 1994 Best Products Award for the
previous-generation CRAY EL94 system that was introduced
last year. Cray officials will be given this award at a luncheon
ceremony held here at the UniForum show tomorrow.
Cray Research provides the leading supercomputing tools and
services to help solve customers' most challenging problems.
###
Editor's Note: A CRAY J916 system is being showcased in
Cray's booth (#2125) at the UniForum conference and
exhibition held here.