Cray will supply CS500 clusters for supercomputers with AMD Epyc processors

AMD has further strengthened its commitment to the HPC community by announcing that AMD EPYC processors have been added to the Cray CS500 Cluster Supercomputer product line.

The scalability, energy efficiency and cost competitiveness of EPYC gives Cray customers a powerful new dynamic to the Cray CS500 systems. The combination of AMD EPYC 7000 processors with the Cray CS500 cluster products provide a flexible, high-density system that’s well suited to tackle a broad range of data-driven, HPC workloads, like computational fluid dynamics.  

Key highlights about the EPYC-based, CS500 cluster systems include:

• Systems provide four dual-socket nodes in a 2U chassis
• Each node supports two PCIe Gen3 x 16 slots (200Gb network capability) and HDD/SSD options
• EPYC 7000 processors support up to 32 cores and eight DDR4 memory channels per socket
• CS500 line will also include a 2U chassis with a single two-socket node for large memory configurations, visualization, and service node functionality to complement the compute node form factor

The Cray CS500 system with AMD EPYC will be generally available in Summer 2018. More details are available in the attached press release. Let us know if you have any questions

SEATTLE – April 18, 2018 – Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (Nasdaq: CRAY) today announced it has added AMD EPYC™ processors to its Cray® CS500™ product line. To meet the growing needs of high-performance computing (HPC), the combination of AMD EPYC™ 7000 processors with the Cray CS500 cluster systems offers Cray customers a flexible, highdensity system tuned for their demanding environments. The powerful platform lets organizations tackle a broad range of HPC workloads without the need to rebuild and recompile their x86 applications. "Cray's decision to offer the AMD EPYC processors in the Cray CS500 product line expands its market opportunities by offering buyers an important new choice," said Steve Conway, senior vice president of research at Hyperion Research. "The AMD EPYC processors are expressly designed to provide highly scalable, energy- and cost-efficient performance in large and midrange clusters." The Cray CS500 systems with AMD EPYC processors also come with Cray’s software programing environment.

Cray has integrated and optimized the Cray Programming Environment and libraries to enhance AMD EPYC processor performance. “Our decision to offer AMD EPYC processors in our CS500 product line is emblematic of Cray’s commitment to the community to deliver a comprehensive line of high-density systems with an optimized programing environment to deliver the required performance and scalability,” said Fred Kohout, senior vice president of products and chief marketing officer at Cray. “Cray’s leadership in supercomputing is well known and AMD is thrilled to be working with them on the CS500 cluster system,” said Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager, datacenter and embedded solutions, AMD. “Cray is the first system vendor to offer an optimized programing environment for AMD EYPC processors, which is a distinct advantage. Combining AMD EPYC processors with Cray’s supercomputing expertise opens new opportunities for both companies to grow.”

The Cray CS500 cluster systems with AMD EPYC 7000 processors provide four dual-socket nodes in a 2U chassis, each node supporting two (2) PCIe Gen3 x 16 slots (200Gb network capability) and HDD/SSD options. AMD EPYC 7000 processors support up to 32 cores and eight DDR4 memory channels per socket. The CS500 line will also include a 2U chassis with one node for large memory configurations, visualization, and service node functionality to complement the compute node form factor.

The Cray CS500 system with AMD EPYC processors will be generally available in summer 2018.