
Cray and Microsoft Bring Supercomputing to Azure - rbanffy
http://investors.cray.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=98390&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2310378
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dhd415
An article from Ars Technica [1] on this topic makes the following point:

"Unlike most Azure compute resources, which are typically shared between
customers, the Cray supercomputers will be dedicated resources. This suggests
that Microsoft won't be offering a way of timesharing or temporarily borrowing
a supercomputer. Rather, it's a way for existing supercomputer users to
colocate their systems with Azure to get the lowest latency, highest bandwidth
connection to Azure's computing capabilities rather than having to have them
on premises."

Somewhat interestingly, this sounds like a bit like hybrid cloud except that
it's hosted entirely in Azure datacenters rather than partially on-premises.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/cray-
supercomputers-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/cray-
supercomputers-coming-to-azure-cloud/)

~~~
KGIII
With distributed computing and cloud hosting allowing for thousands of
instances, with huge amounts of resources such as obscene terabytes of RAM, is
there still a need for supercomputers? They are, effectively, the same thing,
right?

I am guessing that I'm not understanding something fully. I don't really see
the benefit anymore, now that you can lease thousands of cores, petabytes of
disk, and multiple terabytes of RAM.

What's the benefit? What am I missing? Google is none too helpful.

~~~
jabl
Do you get MPI ping-pong latencies on the order of a microsecond on a "normal"
public cloud?

No? Well, MPI applications that are sensitive to latency is one usecase where
a "real" supercomputer can be useful.

~~~
KGIII
Ah! This is even better. It led me to finding this:

[http://icl.cs.utk.edu/hpcc/hpcc_results_lat_band.cgi](http://icl.cs.utk.edu/hpcc/hpcc_results_lat_band.cgi)

I do believe I get it. Now to find out what kind of applications are greatly
benefited from this.

Thanks HN! You always make me dig in and learn new things!

Edit: It was "MPI latency" that led me to that result, by the way.

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vmarsy
> Now to find out what kind of applications are greatly benefited from this.

The common applications are scientific computing usually, here's a quick
overview[1] of the kind of algorithms ran on supercomputers: PDEs, ODEs, FFTs,
Sparse and Dense linear algebra, etc.

These are usually used for scientific applications like weather forecasting,
where you need to know about the result on time (i.e. before the hurricane
reaches the coast!)

[1]
[https://www.nap.edu/read/11148/chapter/7#125](https://www.nap.edu/read/11148/chapter/7#125)

~~~
KGIII
I'll scrape the whole book and read it. Thanks! I know weather models still do
it on supercomuters but understood the currently have plenty.

I look forward to reading the book.

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vertex-four
This sounds like the sort of thing that was developed for one specific high-
value customer. I wonder who it was.

~~~
fintler
It seems like it might be a good fit for US national labs -- when a job
doesn't involve ITAR or anything classified.

~~~
alexsea
Azure Government has datacenters that can support ITAR and DOD workloads. A
Cray system could be deployed in one of those datacenters.

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walkingolof
Wonder whats left of old Cray besides the name ?

Book tip: [https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-
Su...](https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-
Supercomputer/dp/0471048852)

~~~
ams6110
Not a lot. They sold off their interconnect technology which was their last
real secret sauce. Now they really just sell turnkey x86 HPC clusters with
some mainframe-esque job dispatch software.

~~~
velox_io
It's a shame you can't get a cable to link computers via PCIe (supports cables
over 3m[0]). Multiple x16 connections that would lead to some decent bandwidth
while being low-latency, without the network overhead or shelling out for
high-end switches.

You can skip halfway.
[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5xvwPa3r7M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5xvwPa3r7M)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Using dual port adapters, you can do a three-node Infiniband ring with no
routers involved and get full speed. Dual port FDR (40 Gbit/s) cards are about
$150 on Ebay nowadays. If you've bought the hardware to warrant needing such a
setup (i.e. 3 dual-socket Xeon servers), that's a very negligible cost.

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__mp
Could be interesting for continuous integration and testing new Cray setups.

I usually have to spend a week or so to adapt our builds once we get a system
upgrade. It's mostly to hack around weird Cray setups and because we dare to
link C++ and Fortran code bases on GPU.

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alexnewman
How much?

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grabcocque
If you need to ask... you definitely can’t afford it.

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jazoom
I'd be very surprised if any company purchased this without asking how much.
That would be ridiculous.

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former_ms_hpc
Bravo ryanwaite!

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criddell
SRC Labs was started by Seymour Cray just before he died and they have started
transferring patents to a Native American tribe to avoid review by the patent
office's review board.

That kind of behavior really hurts the Cray name in my eyes. Microsoft should
find a better partner.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-allergan-patents/tech-
ent...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-allergan-patents/tech-entity-has-
tribal-patent-deal-similar-to-allergans-idUSKCN1BN35X)

~~~
pinewurst
SRC isn't Cray at all though.

Cray Research, from which Seymour departed long before, was acquired by SGI.
When SGI cratered, the SGI and Cray _names_ were separately sold off. "Cray"
was bought by Tera, a faltering supercomputer maker in Seattle, who adopted
that name (sort of a HPC witness protection program thing). They're as much
"Cray" as gadgets sold at Target are "Westinghouse".

SRC is a distant descendant of the 3rd corporate vehicle started by Seymour
(Cray Research, Cray Computer, then SRC).

~~~
throwaway5901
Tera also brought along many of the employees that were part of Cray Research.
The Cray Inc that exists now isn't exactly CRI, but it started with the same
code and same people, plus a few SGI defectors. It should be considered the
spiritual successor.

