[Beowulf] Semour Cray 90th Anniversary

[Michael Di Domenico]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Prentice Bisbal
<prentice.bisbal at rutgers.edu> wrote:
>
> On 10/14/2015 04:55 PM, Greg Lindahl wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 09:11:53PM +0100, James Cownie wrote:
>>
>>> If you read https://www.alcf.anl.gov/articles/introducing-aurora
>>> <https://www.alcf.anl.gov/articles/introducing-aurora> carefully,
>>> you can notice that Intel is the prime contractor on the Aurora
>>> contract, while Cray is a subcontractor
>>
>> I found this description of the system to be very interesting:
>>
>> http://aurora.alcf.anl.gov/
>>
>> Aurora is going to have a 3rd generation Xeon Phi with "2nd Generation
>> Intel Omni-Path" and silicon photonics. So this is a Cray system using
>> Intel's new off-the-shelf interconnect, the fruit of Intel's
>> collaboration with Cray on interconnect. It's a large enough deal that
>> I wouldn't read too much into who's the prime and who's the sub, there
>> could be a lot of business reasons as to why this contract arrangement
>> might make sense.
>>
>>
> I agree. It could be as simple as Cray would rather someone else handle the
> project/contract management responsibilities (pronounced 'headaches').
>
> On the other hand, this will probably be the first system with Intel's
> silicon photonics, so it is possible that Intel wanted to be the lead to
> make sure its latest wonder-technology succeeds in its first real trial.

it also stands to reason that intel is floating all the cash to build
the machine instead of cray.   between the new tech and $200mil in
float money, i would think cray would happily step to the side
slightly, i know i would.