Magny-Cours adoption is important. Organizations typically don’t upgrade HPC clusters with new CPUs, but AMD is billing Interlagos as a drop-in option for MC. As such, it’ll offer up to 2x the cores (16x as compared to 8x) and equal-to-faster clockspeeds. AMD’s corporate marketing VP, Leslie Solon, said the following:

The introduction of the AMD Opteron processor coincided with the HPC industry’s shift to x86 and cluster-based architecture, away from expensive proprietary or RISC-based systems,” said Leslie Sobon, corporate vice president, product marketing, AMD. “AMD provided the server technology that helped drive the democratization of supercomputing and has shown steadfast leadership in helping HPC break performance boundaries. Our new 16-core processor codenamed “Interlagos” will add features specifically for HPC and offer the world’s highest core count for x86. In addition to CPUs, we are also now seeing adoption of our GPU technologies in HPC and believe this will be a significant area for further development.

If current trends continue, AMD’s share of the supercomputer market will slowly rise. The chart is interesting in its own right. Intel’s share of the industry exploded virtually overnight, from a bare footnote in 2001 to a huge slice of the market in 2005. AMD’s Opteron debut went extremely well, but topped out in 2006. It fell steadily for several years thereafter, thanks to increased pressure from Intel’s Core architecture. Thus far, 2011 looks like a winning year, though we suspect Interlagos (currently scheduled for a Q3 debut) will make the difference.

According to the firm, Interlagos will feature multiple enhancements for HPC workloads, including a “Flex FP” technology. Presumably this refers to the fact that Bulldozer modules share an FPU. AMD is attempting to spin this as a positive and refers to Flex FP as “an innovation that allows for significant overall processor power savings when the Flex FP is not fully utilized.”

That’s not necessarily untrue. Bulldozer is quite different from any of AMD’s previous architectures. Previous K8/K10 processors were built for high performance first and foremost. Bulldozer, in contrast, is designed to maximize instruction execution efficiency and die size. AMD’s decision to build a single, powerful, shared FPU unit rather than building two completely separate cores may well reduce power consumption. The big question now is whether or not Bulldozer can deliver performance good enough to challenge Intel’s dominance.

“We built the world’s first production petaflops system with the Cray XT5 supercomputer, reinvented high performance networking with the Gemini interconnect, and we are now redefining accelerator-based supercomputing with the unified GPU and scalar technologies built into the Cray XK6 system,” said Barry Bolding, vice president of Cray’s product division.

A powerful addition to Cray’s line of highly-advanced supercomputers, the Cray XK6 system pairs AMD’s next-generation Opteron processors with up to 16 cores code-named Interlagos powered by the Bulldozer micro-architecture (up to 96 per cabinet) and Nvidia Tesla X2090-series compute cards (up to 96 per cabinet) to create a true hybrid supercomputer with intra-node flexibility. By combining AMD Opteron processors with Nvidia GPUs, the compute node in the Cray XK6 system gives users the option to run applications with either scalar or accelerator components with up to 70TFLOPS of compute performance per cabinet. The Cray XK6 compute blades can also be blended with Cray XE6 compute blades into a single, multi-purpose supercomputing system.

Upgradeable from Cray XT4, Cray XT5, Cray XT6 or Cray XE6 systems, the Cray XK6 system is expected to be available in the second half of 2011. It can be configured in a single cabinet with tens of compute nodes, to a multi-cabinet system with tens of thousands of compute nodes.

The Cray XK6 system introduces an new approach to increasing programmer productivity with a unified x86/GPU programming environment that includes tested and powerful tools, libraries, compilers and third-party software. When combined with the Cray Linux Environment, the result is a fully integrated Cray supercomputer that blends scalable hardware, software and a network. Cray XK6 customers will be able to utilize the capabilities of a multi-purpose supercomputer designed for the next-generation of many-core, high performance computing (HPC) applications.

“Every aspect of the Cray XK6 has been engineered to meet the real-world performance demands of researchers and scientists tasked with solving the world’s grand challenges. [...] We are leveraging our expertise to create a scalable hybrid supercomputer – and the associated first-generation of a unified x86/GPU programming environment – that will allow the system to more productively meet the scientific challenges of today and tomorrow,” added Mr. Bolding.

The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Manno, Switzerland is Cray’s first customer for the new Cray XK6 system. CSCS, which develops and promotes technical and scientific services for the Swiss research community in the field of HPC, signed a contract with Cray to upgrade its Cray XE6m system, nicknamed “Piz Palu,” to a multi-cabinet Cray XK6 supercomputer.

“GPUs are playing an increasingly important role in high performance computing as researchers and scientists look to augment the CPU performance on certain codes. Cray is a leader in the high-end of the supercomputing market and has designed, built and installed some of the world’s most powerful systems. The company has decades of experience in successfully integrating hybrid processor types into large scale systems. This strategy of hybrid supercomputing is extremely valuable, and Cray is in a good position to take advantage of it,” said Earl Joseph, IDC program vice president for HPC.