Thursday, March 20, 2014

Cray Gets First Install In China

Seattle-based supercomputer maker Cray said Wednesday that it has won a deal to install its first, ever, supercomputer in China, at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital. According to Cray, the company's Cray XC30 will be installed to further medical research in the bioinformatics and next generation sequencing areas for the hospital. Cray has traditionally had to be very careful about sales into China and other countries, due to U.S. export restrictions on supercomputers, which until recently had been better known for weapons and military research than the myriad of commercial uses like data mining and biotechnology research. A series of relaxation of those supercomputer restrictions occurred through the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton eras--as personal computer power quickly eclipsed prior supercomputer limits on computational capability hardcoded into those export restrictions.