The future of supercomputers relies on the new Cray and Intel collaboration unveiled on Monday by the two industry leaders, who have established a multi-year agreement for the development of high-performance computing, which “will result in HPC systems that will help solve some of the world’s most complex scientific, engineering and humanitarian challenges,” the two partners said in a statement.

Intel and Cray will be working on advancing HPC on Intel microprocessors and bring future innovative technologies to Cray server systems. The results of the agreement between the two industry leaders won’t be available on the market before 2011 or 2012.

Cray President and CEO Peter Ungaro said in a statement: “We’re excited at the potential of bringing together Intel’s powerful silicon expertise and Cray’s industry leadership in scalable HPC systems. We pride ourselves in offering the most innovative supercomputing systems and our customers will now enjoy greater choice in processor technologies.”

The collaboration between Intel and Cray came a couple of years after Intel’s longtime rival AMD managed an exclusive deal with the supercomputer maker, but it seems that Intel’s efforts to catch up with AMD were successful, and this deal in particular goes to show that.

"Cray's commitment to Intel is a testament of our commitment to HPC and the strength of our hardware and software roadmap and many-core research," said Patrick Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "Throughout Cray's history, it has been an innovator in high-end HPC while Intel has pushed the boundaries of processor technology.”

Within the next 3-4 years, the supercomputer market is said to almost double, and Intel’s involvement in future technologies will certainly pay off. So far, the two partners gave no specific details on the products they’re developing, but the “Cascade” program is said to rely on Intel computers (the program is funded under the High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) and sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).