Microsoft is committed to the High Performance Computing (HPC) needs of its enterprise Cloud customers. Azure HPC for engineers is transforming how manufacturing companies think about HPC.
Azure has been investing in HPC since their rollout of InfiniBand instances and the investments continued with the acquisition of GreenButton in 2014. More recently, Azure has added high-end GPUs and acquired Cycle Computing. That is quite a bit more activity in HPC than other public Cloud providers.
How does the Cray - Azure partnership fit into this?
Cray plays at the top end of High Performance Computing workloads. As of February 2018, there are 4 Cray Supercomputers among the world wide top 10. Cray's business is the toughest HPC workloads, which require specialized compute equipment.
This new partnership bringings Azure’s specialized services to Cray’s customer base. Jazon Zander, Corporate VP at Azure, summed it up this way:
“The Cray systems easily integrate with Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Data Lake storage, the Microsoft AI platform, and Azure Machine Learning services for rich workflows and collaboration”.
The partnership between Cray and Azure is significant for two major reasons:
- First, this is yet another clear sign that Azure is committed to providing enterprise grade, flexible, on-demand HPC.
- Second, Cray’s customers now have an option to add Azure’s specialized services to their arsenal of tools.
All of this is great news for the HPC commuity. If you'd like to know more about this, contact us at UberCloud and we can have a conversation.
Sources:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/cray-supercomputers-are-coming-to-azure/
https://www.cray.com/solutions/supercomputing-as-a-service/cray-in-azure/welcome
https://www.cray.com/blog/five-things-need-know-cray-supercomputing-azure-cloud/
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/azure-goes-cray/
https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/10/23/crayazure-can-cloud-propel-supercomputing/
