HPE Cray

HPE Cray. It is a supercomputing division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) formed following HPE's acquisition of the pioneering supercomputer company Cray Inc. in 2019. The division combines Cray's decades of leadership in high-performance computing (HPC) with HPE's global scale and enterprise technology portfolio. HPE Cray designs and delivers some of the world's most powerful and advanced supercomputing systems for government, academic, and commercial research.

History

The division's lineage traces directly to Cray Inc., a company founded by Seymour Cray and renowned for iconic systems like the Cray-1 and the Cray X-MP. Following a series of corporate transitions, including its acquisition by SGI, Cray Inc. was operating as an independent entity when Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced its purchase in May 2019 for approximately $1.3 billion. This strategic acquisition was finalized in September 2019, integrating Cray's technology and talent into HPE's broader HPC and Artificial Intelligence initiatives. The merger aimed to create a more formidable competitor in the exascale computing era, combining Cray's Slingshot interconnect and Shasta system architecture with HPE's The Machine research and extensive commercial reach.

Products

HPE Cray's product portfolio is centered on its flagship Cray EX and Cray XD supercomputer platforms. The Cray EX system, a direct evolution of the Shasta architecture, is a liquid-cooled, scalable platform designed for exascale-class performance, powering systems like the Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The division also offers the Cray XD series for diverse technical computing workloads. These systems are integrated with Cray's proprietary Slingshot networking technology and supported by a comprehensive software environment including the Cray Programming Environment, which features compilers, libraries, and tools like Cray Pat and Cray Apprentice2. HPE Cray also provides advanced storage solutions such as the Cray ClusterStor E1000, optimized for massive data workflows.

Technology

The technological distinction of HPE Cray systems lies in a cohesive, purpose-built architecture. The Slingshot interconnect is a critical innovation, providing high-bandwidth, low-latency networking with advanced congestion control and adaptive routing, essential for massive MPI and AI workloads. Its systems employ sophisticated direct liquid cooling, often using warm water, to achieve extreme density and energy efficiency. The integrated software stack, including the Cray Linux Environment and programming tools, is designed to maximize application performance and simplify system management. This full-stack co-design approach, from processor and GPU integration to the software layer, is a hallmark inherited from the legacy of Seymour Cray.

Applications

HPE Cray supercomputers are deployed for the most computationally demanding challenges across science and industry. In national security, they are used by agencies like the United States Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration for nuclear weapons simulation and cryptanalysis. Major research institutions, including the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, use them for high-fidelity climate modeling and weather prediction. In the commercial sector, applications span computational fluid dynamics for aerospace design at companies like Boeing, drug discovery in pharmaceuticals, and financial risk modeling. These systems are also pivotal in advancing artificial intelligence, training large-scale generative AI models and enabling scientific machine learning.

Market Position and Competition

HPE Cray is a dominant force in the global supercomputing market, particularly in the high-end segment for government and academic research. Its main competitors include Fujitsu, builder of the Fugaku system, and Lenovo, which holds a significant share in the broader HPC cluster market. Other competitors are Atos with its Bull Sequana platform and NVIDIA, which leverages its GPU technology to influence supercomputer design. HPE Cray's strength is its ability to deliver fully integrated, exascale-capable systems, as evidenced by its contracts for several CORAL-2 systems for the United States Department of Energy. The division competes on total system performance, architectural efficiency, and its deep software ecosystem rather than on commodity components alone.

Category:Supercomputer companies Category:Hewlett Packard Enterprise Category:High-performance computing