India's Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics Places Order for Cray XT5(TM) Supercomputer

Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) today announced the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) in Calcutta, India has selected the Cray XT5™ supercomputer for its Theory Division. Scheduled for installation in summer of 2009, this will be the first Cray XT5 system in India. Cray, with its Indian sales and service representative Hinditron Cray Supercomputers (India) Pvt. Ltd., has been associated with SINP since the 2005 installation of a Cray XD1™ supercomputer.

SINP, an institute for basic research and training in physical and biophysical sciences, will use the Cray XT5 system to advance its work in quantum chromodynamics and other areas of theoretical physics. The two-cabinet Cray XT5 system for SINP contains Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors, nearly 13 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second) of peak performance and 2.75 terabytes of main memory. SINP is the first customer in Cray's Asia Pacific region to acquire the same computing architecture as the petaflops system Cray recently installed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

"The Theory Division of our institute has remained at the fore-front of a multitude of theoretical research areas. Some of the work carried out at Saha Institute has been recognized world over as milestone contributions," said Professor Bikash Sinha, Director, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. "The new Cray XT5 system, together with the existing Cray XD1 system, should enable us to explore new territories, especially in the areas of lattice quantum chromodynamics in chiral regime and at large volumes."

"We are very pleased with SINP's selection of the Cray XT5 system, as it introduces the Asia Pacific region to the same supercomputing technology currently powering the famous 'Jaguar' petaflops system," said Andrew Wyatt, vice president, Cray Asia Pacific. "SINP's work in theoretical physics is a perfect match for the Cray XT5, which is designed to run challenging, high-end scientific research and engineering applications with superior scalability, performance and reliability. Additionally, our association with Hinditron Cray ensures SINP will receive the superior level of service and support that our customers have come to expect."

Initially a part of the University of Calcutta, the Institute was accorded autonomy in 1951. Since then a Governing Body (Council from 1972), chaired by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta and having representatives from the University of Calcutta, the Union Government and the Government of West Bengal, was in the management until 1992 when this tripartite agreement came to an end. The Institute entered a contract with the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India by which SINP retains its autonomy with the administrative control now passing on to the DAE. It has the recognition of the University of Calcutta, Universities in and around Kolkata as well as Homi Bhabha National Institute of the DAE as a Centre for conducting research for doctoral degrees and providing facilities for teaching and research in Physical and Biological Sciences. The Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, India (and Secretary, DAE, Govt. of India) chairs the governing council with members comprising of three scientists nominated by the DAE, two representatives of the DAE, two nominees of CU, one nominee of Govt. of West Bengal and the Director of the Institute.

About the Cray XT5 Supercomputer

As the world's most scalable Linux supercomputer, the Cray XT5 system combines unprecedented sustained application performance with exceptional manageability and reliability, and lower cost of ownership for customers. Using powerful Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, the Cray XT5 system supports both Cray XT4™ blades for optimized compute-to-communications balance and Cray XT5 blades optimized for memory-intensive and/or compute-biased workloads. Following the established success of the Cray XT™ product line, the Cray XT5 system introduces ECOphlex™ technology, packaging and design features that promote energy savings along two dimensions: by enabling greater system density and by reducing the need for expensive air cooling and air conditioners. The system's Cray Linux Environment™ enables optimized performance across a broader range of applications.