SEATTLE, June 05, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (Nasdaq:CRAY) today announced that it has partnered with UK Innovation Center, Digital Catapult and its Machine Intelligence Garage to help organizations of all sizes speed the development of machine intelligence systems. This partnership enables the Machine Intelligence Garage to offer companies the supercomputing power and expertise required to develop and build machine learning and AI solutions.

The Machine Intelligence Garage is a program delivered by Digital Catapult, which supports and promotes advanced digital technology and transformation to drive growth in the UK economy. The effort takes its name from the mythical place garages have in the history of technology. The Machine Intelligence Garage holds an open call every six to 12 weeks to select startups that can benefit most from the computational resources the Machine Intelligence Garage can offer from within the organization or through its partners. It then selects about 30 startups and develops for each a tailored program offering supervision, feedback and a case study of each startup’s corresponding results.

“Our partnership with Cray opens a new door for UK machine intelligence businesses,” said Anat Elhalal, Head of Technology and AI/ML Lead Tech at Digital Catapult. “Cray’s expertise in high-performance computing will give startups much-needed resources to continue the amazing work already underway in the UK for AI and machine learning solutions.”

Cray’s unparalleled leadership in supercomputing, combined with the AI expertise of the UK startup community, can help expand AI across the industry. The Machine Intelligence Garage will give select startups in each chosen group access to the Cray Accel AI Lab, with its comprehensive set of AI tools and programs that let organizations learn, start and scale their AI initiatives. In addition, Cray’s expertise in performance analysis will be a key component of the partnership, as the Machine Intelligence Garage’s research has identified trustworthy benchmarking and performance modeling that will be key as the AI landscape matures.

“Based on research conducted by the Machine Intelligence Garage, startups in the UK have identified that one of their biggest obstacles to progress in AI is access to exceptionally powerful and fast computational systems,” said Per Nyberg, vice president of market development, artificial intelligence and cloud at Cray. “We’re seeing a convergence between AI and supercomputing as organizations work toward taking AI projects out of beta and into production. The number of AI models that must be trained will only increase and organizations are coming to realize the performance and I/O challenges that will arise. Cray’s innovative architectures and robust compute resources, as well as access to our Cray Accel AI Lab, can help address these challenges and give startups the fundamental tools they need to develop successful machine learning systems and initiatives.”

"Throughout the UK we have seen significant artificial intelligence startup activity with financial services, telecom, retail and manufacturing industries leading adoption,” said Helena Schwenk, Research Manager, European Software at IDC. “Startups with complex AI processing requirements can benefit considerably from the availability of supercomputer-class resources throughout their journey of innovation."

About Cray Inc.
Global supercomputing leader Cray Inc. (Nasdaq:CRAY) provides innovative systems and solutions enabling scientists and engineers in industry, academia and government to meet existing and future simulation and analytics challenges. Leveraging more than 40 years of experience in developing and servicing the world’s most advanced supercomputers, Cray offers a comprehensive portfolio of supercomputers and big data storage and analytics solutions delivering unrivaled performance, efficiency and scalability. Cray’s Adaptive Supercomputing vision is focused on delivering innovative next-generation products that integrate diverse processing technologies into a unified architecture, allowing customers to meet the market’s continued demand for realized performance. Go to www.cray.com for more information.

Digital Catapult
Digital Catapult is the UK’s leading advanced digital technology innovation centre, driving early adoption of technologies to make UK businesses more competitive and productive and grow the country’s economy.

Digital Catapult connects large established companies, startup and scaleup businesses and researchers to discover new ways to solve big challenges in the manufacturing and creative industries. Through this collaboration businesses are supported to develop the right technologies to solve problems, increase productivity and open up new markets faster.

The company provides physical and digital facilities for experimentation and testing that would otherwise not be accessible for smaller businesses.

As well as breaking down barriers to technology adoption for startups and scaleups, Digital Catapult’s work de-risks innovation for large enterprises and uncovers new commercial applications in immersive, future networks, and artificial intelligence technologies.

For more information visit www.digicatapult.org.uk.

Cray, the stylized CRAY mark is a registered trademark of Cray Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Cray Media:
Juliet McGinnis
206/701-2152
pr@cray.com

Cray Investors:
Paul Hiemstra
206/701-2044
ir@cray.com

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