Newsroom
Supercomputer Vital to Research in Gulf after Oil Spill and Isaac
August 31, 2012
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Cray Media: Nick Davis 206/701-2123 pr@cray.com |
CARTHE Media: Julie Hollenbeck 206/321-0509 jhollenbeck@rsmas.miami.edu |
Cray Investors: Paul Hiemstra 206/701-2044 ir@cray.com |
Cray XE6M Supercomputer Vital to Hydrocarbon Research in the Gulf of Mexico in the Wake of the Deepwater Horizon Incident and Hurricane Isaac
Cabinet image design by Julie Hollenbeck
Seattle, WA – August 31, 2012 — Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (Nasdaq: CRAY) today announced that the Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE), in collaboration with the University of Miami Center for Computational Science (CCS), will acquire a Cray XE6m supercomputer as part of the organization’s goal to develop and improve computational tools to accurately predict the fate of hydrocarbons released into the environment during normal and hurricane weather conditions.
“This supercomputer is more important than ever to our project in light of Hurricane Isaac cutting directly through our on-going experiment in the Gulf of Mexico. Data collected during the hurricane may help shed light on how pollutants behave should an oil spill occur before or during a major weather event like Hurricane Isaac,” said Tamay Özgökmen, CARTHE director.
An animated movie of Hurricane Isaac going through the experiment can be seen at here.
Özgökmen added, “We have some challenging goals ahead of us as we produce comprehensive modeling hierarchy that provides a four dimensional description of oil/dispersant fate and transport in the Gulf of Mexico and coastal environments across all relevant time and space scales, and in multiple weather conditions. High performance computing is a critical element of our research, and we needed a system that has the performance, usability and demonstrated capabilities that will allow us to start our work now. The Cray XE6m is a great fit for us.”
CARTHE is funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI), which is a 10-year, $500 million independent research program that was established to study the effects of the Deepwater Horizon incident. GoMRI investigates the impacts of oil, dispersed oil, and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and affected coastal States in a broad context of improving fundamental understanding of the dynamics of such events and their environmental stresses and public health implications.
The Cray XE6m supercomputer, which will be located at the University of Miami’s Rosentiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science (RSMAS), will be an important computational resource for a CARTHE program that is studying the surface ocean currents that transport pollutants in real time.
“The Cray XE6m is quite unique and much like a very tightly knit computational ecosystem,” said Nick Tsinoremas, CCS director. “It is likely the very best solution for problems of this type today.”
CCS staff oversaw real-time data management from the information collected from 300 drifting buoys this summer that occurred in five-minute intervals, and they will continue to provide logistical support to scientists as the data are analyzed throughout the project.
“The Cray supercomputer not only provides impressive computing power, but it represents an entirely new form of computing for many principal investigators whose problems fit into the same sort of paradigm as the CARTHE project,” said Joel Zysman, CCS director of high-performance computing. “With the system scheduled to be up and running in approximately nine weeks, we have a wonderful new tool for these researchers.”
“The scientists participating in the CARTHE program are performing some vitally important research, and we are honored that a Cray supercomputer will provide the high performance computing resources that are necessary for their studies,” said Per Nyberg, Cray’s director of business development. “Many of the world’s leading weather, climate and oceanography centers run their simulations on Cray supercomputers, and we are pleased that CARTHE has joined our growing list of customers in this segment.”
The Cray XE6m system includes the same petascale technologies found in high-end Cray supercomputers, such as Cray’s Gemini interconnect, the Cray Linux Environment and powerful AMD Opteron processors. The system is designed to maintain an attractive cost of ownership and extend Cray’s presence in market segments that have needs for technical enterprise supercomputing systems, such as the university, manufacturing, weather and life sciences communities. Fully upgradeable from previous generations of Cray supercomputers, the Cray XE6m system is also designed to give customers the ability to upgrade to future Cray systems and technologies.
About CARTHE
CARTHE comprises 26 principal investigators from 12
universities and research institutions distributed across four
Gulf of Mexico states and four other states. It fuses into one
group investigators with scientific and technical knowledge and
publications related to oil fate/transport processes, oceanic
and atmospheric turbulence, air-sea interactions, tropical
cyclones and winter storms, and coastal and nearshore modeling
and observations. Visit www.carthe.org for more
information.
About University of Miami’s Center for Computational Science
The University of Miami Center for Computational Science (CCS)
was created to catalyze transdisciplinary research in science
and engineering with software, hardware and expertise to
address complex problems of the 21st century and beyond. CCS
provides a framework for promoting collaborative and
multidisciplinary activities with partners within the
university and around the world. With eight focus areas, it
strives for excellence in research, teaching, and service
covering the fundamental, as well as applied aspects, of
computational science.
About Cray Inc.
As a global leader in supercomputing, Cray provides highly
advanced supercomputers and world-class services and support to
government, industry and academia. Cray technology is designed
to enable scientists and engineers to achieve remarkable
breakthroughs by accelerating performance, improving efficiency
and extending the capabilities of their most demanding
applications. Cray’s Adaptive Supercomputing vision is
focused on delivering innovative next-generation products that
integrate diverse processing technologies into a unified
architecture, allowing customers to surpass today’s
limitations and meeting the market’s continued demand for
realized performance. Go to www.cray.com for more information.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements within
the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of
1934 and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, including,
but not limited to, statements related to Cray’s ability
to deliver the system required by CARTHE when required and that
meets CARTHE’s needs. These statements involve current
expectations, forecasts of future events and other statements
that are not historical facts. Inaccurate assumptions and known
and unknown risks and uncertainties can affect the accuracy of
forward-looking statements and cause actual results to differ
materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking
statements. Factors that could affect actual future events or
results include, but are not limited to, the risk that the
system required by CARTHE is not delivered in a timely fashion
or does not perform as expected and such other risks as
identified in the Company’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q
for the quarter ended June 30, 2012, and from time to time in
other reports filed by Cray with the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission. You should not rely unduly on these
forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of
this release. Cray undertakes no duty to publicly announce or
report revisions to these statements as new information becomes
available that may change the Company’s expectations.
Cray is a registered trademark of Cray Inc. in the United States and other countries, and Cray XE6m and Cray Linux Environment are trademarks of Cray Inc. Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.





