Cray CX1
| Company type | Product |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer hardware |
| Founded | September 16, 2008 |
| Defunct | 2012 |
| Products | Compact workstation, modular blade servers |
| Owner | Cray Inc. |
| Parent | Cray Inc. |
The Cray CX1 is a compact workstation designed by Cray Inc., built upon the x86-64 platform. Introduced on September 16, 2008, and discontinued by early 2012, it features a single chassis housing up to eight modular single-width blade servers, capable of delivering as many as 96 processor cores. Each blade can perform computations independently or be linked together through clustering for combined processing power.
Compute blade
The primary modular blade supports dual Intel Xeon processors from the 5400, 5500, and 5600 series, accommodates up to eight DDR3 SDRAM (PC3-8500) DIMMs, and includes space for two 2.5" SATA hard drives. Each compute blade is equipped with a PCIe x16 slot intended for graphics cards or other expansions. The initial models launched with Intel E5400 CPUs, while subsequent versions introduced both low-power "L5xxx" and high-performance "X5xxx" Intel options. Depending on the variant, blades offered Gigabit Ethernet and DDR Infiniband connectivity; blades lacking factory-installed Infiniband could utilize third-party PCIe adapters.
Storage blade
Building upon the compute blade design, the storage blade replaces the standard blade cover with a two-width module supporting either eight 2.5" or four 3.5" SATA drives. While maintaining the same Intel processor choices, this blade does not provide PCIe expansion due to the presence of a RAID controller occupying that slot.
Visualization and GPU blades
These blades utilize the PCIe expansion slot to upgrade compute blades with workstation-class Nvidia Quadro graphics or scientific-grade Nvidia Tesla accelerator cards. They enhance visualization capabilities and enable access to Nvidia's CUDA platform, boosting performance for scientific and engineering applications.
Unique features
The Cray CX1 stood out by delivering powerful deskside computing with features tailored for office settings. Its cooling system incorporated active noise cancellation technology to minimize fan noise. The system integrated Ethernet and Infiniband switches internally, removing the need for separate networking hardware and facilitating high-speed connections in clustered environments. Unlike conventional servers that require 220 V power sources, the CX1’s redundant power supplies operated on standard office electrical outlets (120 V AC, 20 A). A front-mounted touchscreen interface allowed users to control blades and monitor parameters such as power usage, processor temperatures, and fan speeds throughout the chassis.
Comparison with other Cray systems
The architecture of the CX1 differs significantly from that of the XT5h, making their blades incompatible. Notable differences include:
- The XT5h supports vector, FPGA, and scalar blades (X2, XR1, and XT4/XT5 models), commonly used alongside service blades that provide network connectivity and manage a Lustre filesystem distributed over multiple RAID units.
- Its operating environment is UNICOS/lc, which combines SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with either Catamount or Cray's own Compute Node Linux.
- The CX1 supports GPU (Nvidia Quadro) and scalar (Intel Xeon) compute blades, typically integrated with built-in network switches (Gigabit Ethernet, Infiniband) and service blades containing RAID arrays.
- Supported operating systems include Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as Windows HPC Server 2008.