cray-xcseriesCray announced today that it will be providing Petroleum Geo-Services with a massive five-petaflop XC40 supercomputer and Sonexion 2000 storage array in a deal that the company calls one of the largest systems it has ever delivered to a commercial customer.

PGS needs the high-powered computer to create high resolution seismic maps and 3D models of the earth’s sub-surface, which it sells to oil and gas companies in order to help them determine locations for offshore oil exploration and drilling. One the computer’s key applications will be working on the PGS Triton survey, the highest resolution seismic survey of the deep waters off the Gulf of Mexico.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but IDC said that it’s the largest supercomputer ever shipped to the oil and gas sector, and would have ranked among the top 12 in November’s survey of fastest supercomputers in the world. By comparison, the closest publicly announced competitors in the oil and gas market are supercomputers at Total and BP that exceed 2 petaflops.

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