Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) sets to bolster its computing muscle with the $1.3 billion acquisition of Cray, the famous company behind 3 of the top 10 supercomputers in the world.
“Answers to some of society’s most pressing challenges are buried in massive amounts of data,” HPE says. “Only by processing and analysing this data will we be able to unlock the answers to critical challenges across medicine, climate change, space and more. Cray is a global technology leader in supercomputing and shares our deep commitment to innovation. By combining our world-class teams and technology, we will have the opportunity to drive the next generation of high performance computing and play an important part in advancing the way people live and work.”
Founded in 1972 as Cray Research, Cray currently employs 1300 people across the world. It currently offers the XC and CS supercomputing platforms, as well as the next-gen Shasta Series, all designed to handle massive data sets, converged modeling, simulation, AI and analytics workloads. The machines are sold as integrated systems complete with high-performance storage, low-latency HPC interconnects, a full software stack and programming environment, data anlytics and AI solutions.
HPE says the acquisition will lead to "significant" customer benefits, including future HPC-as-a-service and AI/ML analytics via HPE GreenLake, a "comprehensive" end-to-end portfolio of HPC infrastructure, differentiated next-gen technology addressing data intensive workloads and enhanced supply chain capabilities. Of course, it also pushes the HPE position in the HPC segment, especially within the academic and federal business segments.
