Cray Wins $52 Million Supercomputer Contract

The Interfacer writes "Cray and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science announced that Cray has won the contract to install a next-generation supercomputer at the DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). The systems and multi-year services contract, valued at over $52 million, includes delivery of a Cray massively parallel processor supercomputer, code-named 'Hood.'"

Re:Cray "getting it" might let them come back.

[Billly Gates]

Try doing massive calculations using matrixes on a cluster? Large datasets need to share the same memory and only a super computer can provide it.

Re:Just enough for them to limp along...

[e2d2]

I was talking about this just a few days ago, wondering if maybe cray had been doing work it simply couldn't talk about for uncle sam, it would explain their ability to stay alive. If a company like cray works on a super computer for say the NSA would we know? Maybe through FOIA, but I have no idea.

White collar welfare.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Cray computers has failed miserably in the marketplace. The solutions it produces is completely out of whack with the cost of solving the problem. This 52 million bucks is just welfare for PhDs in Computational Fluid Dynamics, Computational Electromagnetics, etc. People building ivory towers in the skies with their heads in clouds ...

America would be better served if we sink the money in creating interoperability standards and creates ways to increase competition in the computational industries. Every company from Microsoft, to Apple to Parametric Techologies to SDRC to Oracle to ANSYS to itsy-bitsy-prof-and-grad-student-garage startups work to build vendor lock-in into every one of their products. The market creates rich rewards for locking in the user to one software product and preventing the user from migrating to a more efficient competitor.

Promote interop and competition. Super computers will become dime a dozen.