Cray XK7
The Cray XK7 was a supercomputer developed by Cray Inc. and launched in 2011 as part of the Cray XE and XK series. It was notable for its hybrid architecture, combining AMD Opteron CPUs with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. This approach aimed to leverage the strengths of both processor types, using CPUs for general-purpose tasks and GPUs for highly parallel, computationally intensive calculations.
The XK7's architecture was based on the Cray Gemini interconnect, a high-bandwidth, low-latency network critical for scaling performance across a large number of nodes. The Gemini interconnect allowed for efficient communication between CPUs and GPUs within a node, as well as between different nodes in the system.
Key features of the Cray XK7 included:
- Hybrid CPU-GPU Architecture: Utilizing AMD Opteron processors for general computation and NVIDIA Tesla GPUs for accelerated computing.
- Cray Gemini Interconnect: A high-speed, low-latency network providing inter-node communication.
- Cray Linux Environment (CLE): A customized Linux operating system optimized for high-performance computing workloads.
- Scalability: Designed to scale to thousands of compute nodes, delivering significant computational power for scientific and engineering applications.
The Cray XK7 was deployed at various research institutions and government laboratories for simulations, data analysis, and other demanding computational tasks. Some notable deployments included systems at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
The XK7 represented a significant step in the evolution of hybrid supercomputing architectures, paving the way for subsequent generations of systems that further integrated CPUs and GPUs for enhanced performance and energy efficiency. While now superseded by more modern architectures, it remains a significant system in the history of high-performance computing.