Appro


Appro was a developer of supercomputing supporting High Performance Computing markets focused on medium- to large-scale deployments. Appro was based in Milpitas, California with a computing center in Houston, Texas, and a manufacturing and support subsidiary in South Korea and Japan.
Cray Inc. purchased Appro in November 2012.

Company history

Appro was founded in 1991 by President and CEO Daniel Kim. Mr. Kim expanded the company in the US market as OEM high performance rackmount computer systems manufacturer. Appro quickly became one of the fastest growing rackmount computer companies.
In 2002, Appro produced and marketed its own line of branded high-density servers for the high-performance and Internet computing markets in a transition from OEM to Appro branded products.
In 2005, Appro expanded manufacturing, engineering and product development teams in South Korea and introduced its first blade cluster, the Appro HyperBlade Server Cluster Solution and the Appro 1142H, the first 1U 4-processor server available to the HPC market.
In 2006, Appro launched its first flagship product, the Xtreme-X Supercomputer based on x86 processors. The system combines high performance and high availability in a balanced architecture for scaling out data centers from medium to large-sized systems. The supercomputer features the Appro Cluster Engine Management Software, a complete lights-out remote management system.
In 2008 and 2009, Appro announced the Appro HyperPower Cluster, a hybrid CPU/GPU computing based on NVIDIA Tesla and NVIDIA Cuda software technology and including professional services and cluster management options. Appro also launched the Appro GreenBlade System.
In 2011, Appro revealed the next generation Xtreme-X Supercomputer. The system featured the latest processing and accelerator technologies, increased performance/watt, multiple high performance network connectivity, I/O and disk options along with specialized professional services. The system addressed four critical HPC workloads: capacity, hybrid, data intensive, and capability computing. The reinvented system won several major supercomputing contracts for customers such as San Diego Supercomputer Center, Lockheed Martin, NNSA, University of Tsukuba, and Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, Los Alamos National Laboratories.
On November 9, 2012, Cray Inc. announced plans to acquire Appro for $21.8 million to strengthen the company's HPC cluster system offerings. On November 21, 2012 Cray announced it had completed the acquisition of Appro International, Inc.

Customers and Supercomputing Projects