Seeking to expand the universe of potential customers for its supercomputers beyond government labs and academic institutions, Cray Inc. today said it has struck an exclusive deal with Microsoft Corp. that will provide dedicated Cray systems in Microsoft Azure data centers.

Supercomputers are used for processor-intensive tasks that exceed even the capabilities of high-end mainframes. Typical applications include gene sequencing, simulation of complex chemical interactions, weather forecasting and processing of large-scale mathematical models. Infiniti Research Ltd. forecasts that the global supercomputer market will grow to about $5 billion by 2021, a 7 percent annual growth rate.

One of the reasons the market isn’t growing more quickly is because of the extensive investments customers must make in storage, networks and environmental equipment to accommodate the needs of such powerful machines. Under the terms of the deal with Microsoft, Cray will install its XC and CS supercomputers with its attached Cray ClusterStor storage systems in select Microsoft Azure data centers, directly connected to the Microsoft Azure network.

“We believe this will expand the availability of high-quality supercomputing to customers who in the past felt they couldn’t own and manage a Cray,” said Barry Bolding, chief strategy officer at Cray. The partnership is “much more than a colo,” he said, referring to the arrangement under which organizations lease data center space at a shared facility. “We’re interested in bringing workloads together where customers have a need for Azure services. They don’t have to worry about populating their own data center.”

Dedicated machines

Unlike a typical cloud infrastructure service, however, the Cray equipment will be dedicated to each customer and not shared. Customers will negotiate multiyear licenses for equipment separately from their Microsoft contracts. “This isn’t a case where you can lay down your credit card and get 10 hours of time,” Bolding said. “We believe dedicated, single-tenant systems are the best way to provide these services.”

The deal provides for Cray customers to gain access to certain Azure services, such as virtual machines, data lake storage and the Microsoft artificial intelligence and machine learning platforms. They can also use Cray Urika-XC analytics software suite and CycleCloud for hybrid high-performance computing management.

“Azure storage is great for backup, recovery and elasticity,” Bolding said. “You can have fast file systems from Cray and long-term storage in Azure data lakes, transparent to customers.”

Bolding said the deal will save most organizations money over the cost of purchasing dedicated Cray systems. “When you buy a Cray you usually size it for the biggest job you need,” he said. “You’ll need storage capability to feed that beast, and you need to store data for long periods of time. A lot of customers buy our fast storage and use it for archive, which isn’t what it’s intended for. Now they can use Azure for disaster recovery and long-term access.”

Cray is interested in providing services on a shared, multitenant basis, but will do that “over time in a way that doesn’t compromise the capability of the systems,” Bolding said. “Total cost of ownership is optimized by putting the right workload on the right system, and it’s the mission-critical work we’re aiming for.”

He wouldn’t say why Cray chose to make the Microsoft arrangement exclusive, other than to describe the arrangement as “a fair and balanced relationship.” Microsoft currently maintains 42 Azure data centers globally, although not all will be equipped to support the supercomputer hardware. Pricing is custom-quoted.

Image: Cray