This morning Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Cray are asserting that HPE can be shopping for out the supercomputer maker for roughly 1.Three billion {dollars}. Intending to make use of Cray’s information and know-how to bolster their very own supercomputing and high-performance computing applied sciences, when the deal closes, HPE will develop into the world chief for supercomputing know-how.
Cray after all wants no introduction. The present chief within the supercomputing area and founding father of supercomputing as we all know it, Cray has been part of the supercomputing panorama because the 1970s. Starting on the time with totally customized methods, in newer years Cray has morphed into an integrator and scale-out specialist, combining processors from the likes of Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA into supercomputers, and making use of their very own software program, I/O, and interconnect applied sciences.
The timing of the acquisition announcement intently follows different main information from Cray: the corporate simply landed a $600 million US Department of Energy contract to provide the Frontier supercomputer to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2021. Frontier is one in all two exascale supercomputers Cray is concerned in – the opposite being a subcontractor for the 2021 Aurora system – and actually Cray is concerned in the one two exascale methods ordered by the US Government to date. So in each a historic and fashionable context, Cray was and is among the largest gamers within the supercomputing market.
HPE for its half has some supercomputing publicity as properly, nonetheless it’s nothing on the size of what Cray has executed. So for HPE, the deal represents a possibility for the agency to amass the know-how and know-how wanted to enhance and evolve their very own supercomputer and HPC applied sciences. Among different issues, this deal means HPE can be choosing up Cray’s Shasta system structure in addition to their new Slingshot interconnect, each of which can be core elements of Frontier.
The firm sounds particularly all for incorporating these applied sciences into their present HPC plans. While supercomputers appeal to a variety of consideration for apparent causes, considerably smaller methods are offered in a lot increased numbers attributable to prices and computing wants. Like many different {hardware} distributors, HPE is using the wave of huge knowledge, together with AI-driven analytics, and the corporate intends to develop their capabilities right here utilizing Cray’s know-how. Interestingly, Cray is definitely the second supercomputer producer picked up by HPE over its lifetime; the corporate additionally picked up the remaining property of Silicon Graphics again in 2016.
Broadly talking, main acquisitions and mergers within the supercomputing house are uncommon occasions. Due to their ever-increasing price ticket, solely a small variety of world-class supercomputers are offered annually. And attributable to these costs the patrons are sometimes governments, which inevitably provides supercomputer development a nationalistic aspect to it. None the much less, as a result of prices are growing – Frontier is the US’s most costly system but at over $500M for the system alone – there’s some strain for consolidation as fewer methods get offered and total efficiency effectivity will increase have been slowing down as properly. It’s not too stunning then that HPE’s plans embrace utilizing Cray’s applied sciences to enhance HPE GreenLake, the corporate’s HPC-as-a-Service providing.
Under the phrases of the deal, HPE can be paying Cray shareholders $35 in money for every Cray share, which is a notable worth premium over Cray’s common inventory worth over the past 12 months. This places the full worth of the deal at practically $1.Three billion, with HPE anticipating the deal to shut within the first quarter of FY2020.
