HPC Supplants Smart Phones as Key Business Driver at World’s Largest Chip Foundry

This Quick Take looks at the recent announcement by the Department of Energy (DOE) of the release of a Request for Proposal (RFP) for exascale systems to be installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the 2021-2022 time frame. The RFP also says that a third system (different from the ORNL computer) may be installed at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in 2022.

Major government buyers we interviewed consistently named Cray as one of the handful of global supercomputer makers capable of true innovation at the system architecture level. These vendors maintain their ability to stay at the forefront of the HPC market by continually reinventing themselves and their products. Cray's capture of the $600 million CORAL 2 contract to deliver the 1.5-exaflops Frontier supercomputer to ORNL in 2021 is the company's latest demonstration of its ability to mutate in response to the evolving HPC market environment.