Cray Expands its entry-level HPC offerings with the CX1-LC Deskside Supercomputer

By DE Editors

Cray Inc. has reduced the entry-level pricing for its high-performance computing (HPC) systems with the introduction of the company’s newest product, the Cray CX1-LC deskside supercomputer. With a base price of less than $12,000, the Cray CX1-LC system will allow a larger segment of scientists and engineers to realize the benefits of supercomputing, which can substantially improve scientific productivity and product development.

Available immediately, the Cray CX1-LC deskside supercomputer is designed to make using HPC systems easy and affordable for customers in a variety of situations, including an engineering team looking for its first cluster. The Cray CX1-LC system offers a Cray cluster architecture at an affordable price, with familiar working environments such as Windows HPC Server 2008 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The Cray CX1-LC system can be upgraded to a full Cray CX1 supercomputer.

Available with the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series and certified as an Intel Cluster Ready System, the Cray CX1-LC deskside supercomputer supports 1-4 compute blades, including visualization and GPGPU blades, in a simplified Cray CX1 chassis. As with the original Cray CX1 system, the Cray CX1-LC product can be configured with storage options that include solid-state drives (SSDs) or large capacity, fixed-drive storage blades.

The Cray CX1-LC system introduces two new compute blades that feature lower costs than the standard blades offered in the Cray CX1 system. One supports only Gigabit Ethernet and is oriented to the workstation user, and the other offers DDR InfiniBand and is oriented to the small cluster user.

For more information, visit Cray, Inc.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.