Cray XT3 coming to DOD

Cray is slated to deliver a supercomputer this summer that will become the largest system in the Defense Department's High Performance Computing Modernization Program.

The Army's Engineer Research and Development Center will get a Cray XT3 that contains more than 4,000 processors and performs more than 21 trillion calculations per second. The supercomputer uses Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processors connected via a high-speed internal network and the Red Storm architecture co-developed by researchers at Cray and the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories, company officials said in a Jan. 27 statement.

The machine will give a huge boost in computational capability to the Army and the department so that they can better handle challenging military, scientific and civil engineering applications, said John West, director of the center's Major Shared Resource Center, in the statement.

Cray Henry, director of the DOD High Performance Computer Modernization Program, agreed. "This system will support our most demanding computational research and engineering teams working on a variety of key technologies such as simulation of tactical aircraft performance, simulating high energy laser performance and simulation of armor performance," Henry said. The Cray XT3 will more than triple the capability of the existing systems at the Major Shared Resource Center in Vicksburg, Miss., which include a 64-processor Cray X1 and a large Cray T3E. The new supercomputer comes as part of a $23 million contract the company received from modernization program officials, according to the statement.