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AMD's 32- and 64-bit dual-core technology fits two processor cores on a single die, giving users of these Cray systems double the processing capacity in the same amount of space, with minimal increases in power consumption and heat levels.

The direct-connect system architectures of the Cray XD1 system and the Cray XT3 systems enable high-performance computing (HPC) applications by directly linking processors,

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memory and I/O resources, instead of using a conventional PCI bus. These architectures ensure that sophisticated software can take full advantage of all the available processing power, as more processors are added to the system.

Dual-core processors allow Cray to achieve high density in both the Cray XD1 and Cray XT3 supercomputers. One Cray XD1 cabinet can house 288 AMD Opteron 200 Series processor cores, boosting its computing capability from the 744 gigaflops (744 billion calculations per second) available with single-core processors to more than 1.2 teraflops.

The Cray XT3 supercomputer, based on the Sandia Red Storm massively parallel processor (MPP) system design, can operate with more than 60,000 processor cores - delivering up to 269 teraflops (269 trillion FLOPS), an increase of 109 teraflops over single-core devices. The 10,000-processor Cray XT3 supercomputer installed at Sandia National Laboratories is the largest Opteron processor-based system in the world.