From the dept of oxymorons: Low cost Cray

Cray has finally announced a low-cost HPC system.

This might have been a good idea for them, 6 years ago, when I first proposed it as a member of Cray's ill-fated cluster group. However, this is nothing more than a minor play, rebadging OEM blade boxes with Cray livery, and represents an expensive implementation of something that is already available for far below what Cray is charging. It's an exercise in branding, in an industry where branding takes second place to word of mouth and reputation, and from the press release, Cray isn't adding any significant value, using Infiniband instead of their own interconnect, and using off the shelf software. Ciara and Tyan make boxes just like this, only much cheaper.

The problem for Cray is that most of their stellar talent, with the exception of Steve Scott, have left for greener pastures. What's left is basically a bunch of mostly ex-IBMers running the joint, people who really don't understand this business from a user point of view. OTOH, this is a tacit acknowledgment that the future of HPC is not in Big Iron (although that will always be there), but in smaller, more easily deployable chunks, and that's a good thing for Cray, even if it took them 6 years to get there.

If Cray can innovate in the software side, add their own personality to the box, and use it as a stepping stone to their larger systems, they might have a shot. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.