CRAY U.K. LIMITED

Their core work

Cray UK is the British arm of Cray Inc., a leading manufacturer of supercomputers and high-performance computing (HPC) systems. In H2020 projects, they contribute HPC infrastructure expertise, exascale programming models, and performance optimization for scientific workloads. Their role spans providing hardware knowledge for heterogeneous computing architectures and enabling large-scale computational simulations in domains like particle physics and turbine engineering.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Cray UK's early H2020 involvement (2017-2019) centered on core HPC concerns: supercomputer hardware, accelerators, memory technologies, and parallel programming models like MPI and GASPI. Their later projects (2019-2023) shifted toward applying that computing power to scientific domains — lattice QCD, particle physics simulations — and toward software-defined infrastructure management. This reflects a move from building the machines to enabling their use in frontier science and cloud-like deployment models.

Cray UK is moving from pure HPC systems expertise toward enabling scientific computing workflows and software-defined infrastructure, making them relevant for projects needing both raw compute power and deployment sophistication.

How they like to work

Cray UK consistently joins as a participant or third party, never as coordinator — typical for a large technology vendor contributing specialist infrastructure knowledge to research-led consortia. With 46 unique partners across 17 countries from just 4 projects, they operate in large, diverse consortia where they serve as the HPC industry voice. This makes them a reliable, low-friction partner who brings commercial-grade computing perspective without seeking to lead.

Cray UK has collaborated with 46 partners across 17 countries through only 4 projects, indicating participation in large pan-European consortia. Their network spans a wide geographic footprint with no evident concentration in a single region.

What sets them apart

Cray UK brings the perspective of a major supercomputer manufacturer into academic and research consortia — few partners can offer direct insight into how exascale hardware is designed and optimized. Their involvement signals projects where real-world HPC deployment matters, not just theoretical computation. For consortium builders, they bridge the gap between academic algorithms and production-grade supercomputing infrastructure.

Highlights from their portfolio

• EPiGRAM-HS
  Directly targeted exascale programming for heterogeneous systems — MPI, accelerators, new memory types — the central challenge for next-generation supercomputing.
• EuroPLEx
  A Marie Curie training network connecting extreme computing with fundamental physics (lattice QCD), showing Cray's role in enabling frontier science.
• SODALITE
  Marked a shift toward software-defined infrastructure and IaC optimization, expanding Cray's profile beyond traditional HPC hardware.