Yes, but can it play...
....you know the rest.
Hot on the heels of the delivery of the 20-plus petaflops "Titan" CPU-GPU hybrid supercomputer to Oak Ridge National Laboratory last week, Cray has launched what is unquestionably a much better machine, the long-awaited "Cascade" system developed in conjunction with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and sporting …
The article misstates it: " the Opteron 6300s announced this week, do not support PCI-Express 2 links either through the chipset or the CPU itself" - the new AMD chips *only* support 2.0.
The lack of PCIe 3.0 support is what kills it here. The entire Cray architecture is built on PCIe and, IMHO, this is one of the few areas where 2.0 vs. 3.0 is a *really* big deal.
I could be wrong of course... but PCIe 3.0 seems to be a key component of Cray's new architecture and I doubt they could get the feeds, speeds and scaling they are claiming without it.
And it will be ever thus.
*****
Kirk: How much refit time before we can take her out again?
Scotty: Eight weeks, Sir, but ye don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for ye in two.
Kirk: Mr.Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?
Scotty: Certainly, Sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?