News in IT

Navtej Kohli IT blog keeps a constant track of the latest happenings in the IT industry. This time it is the Intel-Cray tie up.


Navtej Kohli shares a report he stumbled upon over web.


Microprocessor giant Intel Corp is in a tie-up with supercomputer maker
Cray Inc to bolster Intel's market share for the highest of high-end
computers, executives said.


Cray and Intel announced a multiyear deal to build the next generation
of high-performance computers capable of processing petaflops --
quadrillions of machine instructions a second -- or twice the power of
the world's top existing supercomputer.


While Intel supplies a wide range of supercomputer makers, working with
Cray helps ensure Intel will be inside more of the world's top 10
most-powerful computers, where boasting rights to having the fastest
machines are in constant flux.


"Cray enjoys a pretty unique position in the top 10, and fills a gap in
the range of Intel systems," said Richard Dracott, general manager of
Intel's High Performance Computing division.


More than 70 per cent of the top 500 supercomputers are Intel-based, up
from about half two years ago, he said, citing industry data. Its main
rivals in that segment of the chip market are IBM with its Power
processors and perennial rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.


Cray, a supercomputer pioneer which supplies three of the world's 10
most powerful machines, plans to switch to Intel processors in future
installations. It had previously relied on AMD and custom-built chips.


Cray aims to deliver its first petaflop-scale machine later in 2008 at
Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Intel tie-up will help Cray fulfill
its product technology roadmap code-named "Cascade," which the company
plans to deliver by 2011 or 2012, according to Ian Miller, Cray's head
of sales and marketing.


Cray and Intel said their collaboration would lead to the development
of systems that could help solve some of the most complicated
scientific, engineering and humanitarian issues.


Intel, which has a commanding lead in the mass market for
microprocessors in PCs, has expanded in recent years to focus on chips
that can handle the most arduous computing tasks.


Partnering with Cray helps Intel fill gaps in its historic ambition to
capture this elite segment of the market. Intel chips already power
three of the top five supercomputers.


"The partnership is really about scale (and) moving much larger amounts
of data," Dracott said. "No one wants to take a machine that does jobs
that take weeks or months to complete and have them fall over half way
through the job."


A year-and-a-half ago, Santa Clara, California-based Intel formed a new
business division to target the high performance computer market, one
of the fastest-growing segments in the computer server industry.

The HPC market will grow to $18 billion by 2012 from $10 billion in
2006, executives from the companies said, citing data from market
research firm IDC.


The Intel and Cray executives said they will explore future component
designs such as multi-core processing and advanced interconnects --
technologies that should allow supercomputers to eventually handle
multiple petaflops of data per second.


Courtesy: Reuters