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Peter Ungaro and Kirk Skaugen  (Source: Intel)
Cray will now offer Intel processors, AMD loses one of its last exclusive partners

Intel has been systematically taking back any market share losses it faced at the hands of AMD over the last few years. One of the places that AMD still enjoyed exclusivity was in the high-performance computing (HPC) environment with Cray.

Cray is a name synonymous with supercomputers and traditionally Cray uses AMD processors. DailyTech reported on a Cray supercomputer in 2006 that could use up to 30,000 AMD Opteron processors.

Cray and Intel announced this week that they have signed a new agreement to collaborate on the development of future supercomputing technologies. The multi-year agreement will allow the two companies to jointly explore advanced interconnects -- like Intel’s QuickPath that aims to replace the front side bus -- and multi-core processors.

Cray CEO Peter Ungaro said in a statement, “This collaboration provides the HPC market segment with access to the best microprocessors the industry has to offer at any point in time, in the most advanced supercomputers in the world. This further strengthens Cray's industry-leading adaptive supercomputing vision as we move into the Cascade timeframe and beyond."

Ungaro told eWeek that he expects the first Cray-Intel HPC systems to be available commercially in 2011 or 2012. Ungaro went on to say, “It's really about us and Intel partnering on an R&D level to build future systems that will really make a big change within the overall industry. As I like to say, this will blur the lines between where typically the processor vendor and the system vendor kind of start and stop."

Intel’s QuickPath technology will allow Cray to make much faster interconnects between Intel x86 processors and Cray’s own Vector processors. Kirk Skaugen, vice president of the Intel Digital Enterprise Group says that once these new technologies are integrated into supercomputers the systems could deliver an exaflop of performance equating to one quadrillion calculations per second. An exaflop is 1000 times greater than a petaflop.

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In other news
By DeuceHalo on 4/30/2008 11:12:36 AM , Rating: 2
Crytek has annouced the development of Crysis 2. The release date has been set for sometime in 2011 or 2012. :)




RE: In other news
By Hexus on 4/30/2008 11:13:38 AM , Rating: 4
Lol, Saw that that coming from a mile away.


RE: In other news
By headbox on 4/30/2008 11:37:18 AM , Rating: 2
I was hoping for a Quake reference...


RE: In other news
By DeuceHalo on 4/30/2008 4:25:11 PM , Rating: 2
Eh - I never really had a problem with performance when any of the Quake games were released. Maybe Quake 5 will be the first.


RE: In other news
By PAPutzback on 4/30/2008 11:40:52 AM , Rating: 2
I expect ex-aflops jokes to be coming soon.


RE: In other news
By adanan on 4/30/08, Rating: 0
RE: In other news
By Hexus on 4/30/2008 11:47:50 AM , Rating: 2
It's called inovation you fool, the purpose of making a game like Crysis is to set the bar higher. If we were "just happy" with what we have, we'd all still be playing Pong. You're grammar and your racial slurs clue us all in to your ignorance, so as far as I see it, your opinion of Crysis is irrelivant if not nulled altogether.


RE: In other news
By ImSpartacus on 5/1/2008 4:21:11 PM , Rating: 2
I agree. It is a solid game, but it is more the graphics than anything.

To be honest, it is now just a joke with hardware than a real game. Any mention of high end computing always gets a few "Call me when it can play Crysis" comments.

It's not a bad game, I own it and have played it through. It's just unremarkable aside from the graphics (which are, after all, beautiful).


RE: In other news
By bryanW1995 on 4/30/2008 11:56:19 AM , Rating: 2
I think that we need more than cray + intel have to offer. maybe we can get nasa involved?


QuickPath?
By Screwballl on 4/30/2008 12:03:49 PM , Rating: 2
From what I read, this QuickPath is nothing more than a faster front side bus for Intel CPUs....
The problem with this is that the AMD CPUs have the onboard memory controller and the latest generation 45nm can use 3000 to 6000MHz front side bus speeds compared to Intels current max of 1600MHz (or Xeons 3200MHz).

This is more of a matter of Intel flexing its muscle to take money away from AMD which in and of itself is normal business practice but from a technical standpoint, AMd has the faster memory controller, interconnect and I/O speeds and front side bus speeds.

This is a business decision, not a technical decision.




RE: QuickPath?
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 4/30/2008 12:33:13 PM , Rating: 2
QPI is actually more akin to HyperTransport than front-side bus. When you start talking about Intel's Nehalem, Intel and AMD architecture is pretty much the same thing again. (not interoperable of course, but design-wise very similar)


RE: QuickPath?
By theapparition on 4/30/2008 1:49:52 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
This is a business decision, not a technical decision.

It's both.

Do you bet the future of your company on another one that has serious problems and may not be there 3-4 years from now? Or do you hedge your bets, and make strategic partnerships to plan for the future. In my mind, that choice is clear.

To clarify, Cray is not kicking AMD to the curb. What they are doing, is now also working with Intel. If AMD goes south, they have Intel to fall back on. To further clarify, they will still be using Opterons throught that 2011-2012 time frame. After that, it will most likely be Nehalem and it's successors, unless AMD has a trick up it's sleeve.

quote:
The problem with this is that the AMD CPUs have the onboard memory controller and the latest generation 45nm can use 3000 to 6000MHz front side bus speeds compared to Intels current max of 1600MHz (or Xeons 3200MHz).

Once again, your thinking current designs. Once Nehalem gets released, it will erase much of the multicore edge the Opterons have.


RE: QuickPath?
By omnicronx on 4/30/2008 2:10:17 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Once again, your thinking current designs. Once Nehalem gets released, it will erase much of the multicore edge the Opterons have.
In theory.. this is intels first venture into the world of on die memory controllers. Lets wait until we see some real performance benchmarks and lets see how the performance per watt compares before we make any judgments. It still may be a cheaper solution to go with AMD with a multicore setup.


RE: QuickPath?
By theapparition on 5/1/2008 3:58:13 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
this is intels first venture into the world of on die memory controllers.

Common misconception. Intel sold on-die memory controllers and integrated northbridges far sooner than AMD. At the time, there wasn't much market. One could say that Intel was ahead of it's time. Or at the same time, you could say that AMD timed the market perfectly. Either way, AMD was not the first.

While I completely agree with waiting for benchmarks, there's little doubt that Nehalem will erase the gap for high count multicore designs. Will that gap be marginally narrowed or obliterated? I'll leave to the future to decide.


Cray traditonally uses AMD?
By BenSkywalker on 4/30/2008 6:06:28 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Cray is a name synonymous with supercomputers and traditionally Cray uses AMD processors.


Perhaps it's just me, but the last few years don't change me thinking of Cray as traditionally using MIPS processors, their change over to commodity offerings is really quite recent.




RE: Cray traditonally uses AMD?
By mlau on 5/1/2008 5:31:48 AM , Rating: 2
Cray designed their own processors and later used Alphas. Nowadays they
only design the node interconnects (which is still quite hard work)


RE: Cray traditonally uses AMD?
By s12033722 on 5/3/2008 7:21:29 PM , Rating: 2
That was my immediate reaction too... Somebody hasn't been in the computer world very long.


Damn. That sucks for AMD
By PAPutzback on 4/30/2008 11:37:11 AM , Rating: 2
Please AMD get off your ass and put up some competition this year.

My next pc this fall will most likely be Gigabyte 780G chipset but after that I assume the other Chipset Manufactures will have something that can compete and I'll have to make the switch.




RE: Damn. That sucks for AMD
By omnicronx on 4/30/2008 12:50:29 PM , Rating: 2
I am getting that Gigabyte board too =D. HDMI out and DTS:I and an integrated GPU that can actually play BD's even on a lowly sempron..Perfect for an HTPC and blows anything that intel currently has out of the water. DTS:I also is an added bonus, I think its the first board since soundstorm to have a 5.1 encoder onboard.


last paragraph is wrong
By winterspan on 5/2/2008 5:54:37 AM , Rating: 2
The last paragraph has errors.

Teraflop = 10^12 "Trillion" and Petaflop = 10^15 Quadrillion,
so "Exaflop" is 10^18, known as "Quintillion" , NOT quadrillion




Oh noes
By Baked on 4/30/2008 1:11:56 PM , Rating: 1
I was hoping my AMD stocks would go back up. I'm doomed now. Damn you Intel!




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