Cray descends to midrange HPC shops with baby XC30 supers

Supercomputer maker Cray had been hinting that it would deliver a new cut-down version of its Cascade XC30 system, and the machine is being unveiled on Tuesday at the Cray User Group meeting in Napa Valley, California.

The XC30-AC machines go into more standard cabinets like those used with the XE5 and XE6 predecessors to the Cascade boxes, but are based on the same Intel Xeon E5 processors and Aries Dragonfly interconnect that the larger XC30-LC machines that were announced last November. The LC is short for liquid-cooled, and you will recall that the big bad Cascade boxes had liquid cooling in the racks and an interesting transverse cooling system — via redwolf.newsvine.com