Microsoft goes Cray with supercomputing as a service

Supercomputing giant Cray has teamed up with Microsoft to offer customers access to dedicated supercomputing hardware in Azure data centres.

Under the partnership, Azure users will get access to Cray XC and CS supercomputers along with ClusterStor storage systems, integrated with Azure virtual machines, data lake storage systems, and Microsoft's artificial intelligence and machine learning platforms.

The two companies see the supercomputing as-a-service offering as providing scalable resources for enterprise customers who were previously unable to buy and maintain on-premise Cray systems.

“Dedicated Cray supercomputers in Azure not only give customers all of the breadth of features and services from the leader in enterprise cloud, but also the advantages of running a wide array of workloads on a true supercomputer, the ability to scale applications to unprecedented levels, and the performance and capabilities previously only found in the largest on-premise supercomputing centers," Cray chief executive Peter Ungaro said in a statement.

The pair see the cloud-based supercomputing service as most applicable for pharmaceutical and biotech science, automotive and aerospace engineering, computational fluid dynamics, and geophysics.

They also expect the offering to be relevant for artificial intelligence, advanced data analytics, modelling and simulated workload use cases.

Microsoft did not reveal when the Cray supercomputing as a service will become available, nor in which data centres customers can access it. It has been contacted for detail.

Update 26/10: A Microsoft spokesperson said the service offering is only available to United States customers. No date has been set for the service to be rolled out to data centres in Australia and elsewhere outside the US.