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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Cray has revealed that its products' Q2 profits have literally gone up in smoke.
The company this week announced second quarter revenue of US$100.2m, down from $186.2m in 2015's corresponding quarter. That dip meant the company incurred a loss of $13.1m compared to last year's $5.8m profit.
Things aren't going to be much easier in Q3, due to “a very recent electrical smoke event caused by a failed manufacturing facility power component that will delay the Company's ability to deliver on some customer contracts in 2016, including an impact on anticipated third quarter revenue.”
On the company's earnings call CEO Peter Ungaro said the smoke “damaged five relatively smaller customer systems that were being tested and prep[ped] for shipping, and for which we expected to achieve acceptances before the end of the year including some in the third quarter.”
“Some of these systems were key pieces of larger customer solutions,” he added. “And as a result, their impact to our overall revenue outlook was more significant than just the value of the revenue type to those systems themselves. This event just happened and we're still evaluating the full extent of the impact, as well as our recovery plan. But I want to note that the majority of the loss is expected to be covered by insurance."
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday August 05 2016, @07:16PM
Quoting myself:
> A good example would be High-frequency traders, where low latency is literally worth hundreds of millions, though I don't know if Cray plays in that market.
So no, I don't know specifically that Cray arch is useful for HFT. But I was answering
> surprising to me that there's a place for Cray's bespoke supercomputers when you can fill standard racks with COTS server equipment at a fraction of the cost
with an example of people who wouldn't make as much cash with COTS as they do with dedicated low-latency systems.
We're talking about the people who rent a room with a window across from the exchange to setup their gear, because line-of-sight links are faster than an optical fiber running under the street.
I once interviewed with the guys doing FPGA-based HFT systems. There's a lot of money in non-COTS, because there's a lot to be made.