Cisco Takes Its Shot at Grand Unification for the Datacenter

By John West and Michael Feldman

March 19, 2009

One box to rule them all, and in the network bind them

This week the IT industry exhaled its collectively held breath as Cisco finally announced its Unified Computing Solution (UCS). The announcement itself was pretty thin on any actual, you know, details. Part of this reflects the marketing approach that Cisco is taking with UCS: start at the CIO level, where the air is pretty rarefied, well over the heads of the various server, network and apps managers crouched defensively over their rice bowls. The presumption is that this is an effective way to dislodge its main server competition — stalwarts like IBM, HP and Dell.

Behind the marketing is a mostly enterprise play, but the company is hinting at an HPC angle for UCS. We’ll tell you what we know now, and how this might impact your high performance computing deployment plans.

First of all, what is UCS? Cisco’s Brian Schwartz, an engineer at Cisco’s Server Access Business, described it this way: “UCS is a next generation datacenter architecture that fuses computing, networking, storage access, and virtualization into a single system.” The architecture will be implemented in a product line that Cisco will be rolling out in the weeks and months ahead.

While Schwartz declined to delve into specifics about the makeup of the UCS server hardware (codenamed “California”), a report by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Register shed some light on the inner workings of the upcoming machines. From what Morgan could glean from Dante Malagrino, director of engineering at Cisco’s server access and virtualization business unit, the physical heart of the system is the UCS 5100 series blade server chassis, a 6U form factor that mounts in a standard rack. The 5100 holds servers (Nehalem-based UCS B Series blades), the UCS 2100 fabric extenders, and the UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnect module. All the blades are oriented horizontally, and the server blades come either eight half-width blades or four full-width blades to a chassis. The fabric extenders, up to two per chassis, link the blades to the fabric interconnect.

Schwartz himself describes the UCS 6100 Fabric Interconnect switch as the “heart and brains of the system.” It implements the unified network fabric, and also runs the software that controls, manages, and monitors all the chassis and blade servers. The 6100 hooks the chassis together into a cluster in which each blade runs its own OS, has its own memory, and so on. Two redundant switches can manage 40 blade chassis in a single cluster for a total of 320 servers or about 2500 cores using the upcoming quad-core Nehalem EP chips. The chassis are connected via a lossless 10 Gb Ethernet fabric, and the 6100 supports unified storage access by allowing FCoE and end user Ethernet on the same device.

Virtualization is a big part of this solution, and Cisco has partnerships with VMware and Windows for ESX Server and Hyper-V hypervisors, and runs Windows and at least two flavors of Linux (SUSE and Red Hat). The switch itself is also virtualized, so that as virtual machine images move around the cluster, the network connections aren’t lost. Handy.

The 6100 also hosts the management software for the UCS, Cisco UCS Manager, which is built on the BladeLogic operating system that Cisco has licensed from BMC Software. This approach puts both network and server management into the network itself, and Cisco is very proud of its XML-based API that allows adventurous users and third-party developers to build higher level tools on top of the UCS management layer.

And here is where the company starts to talk about high performance computing. For example, for applications that want to live in really large compute grids — as in thousands of nodes — the XML API will provide the mechanism to manage these super-sized systems as a single entity. According to him, “literally anything you can do in our CLI and GUI, you can do in our XML API, and that’s very attractive to system management companies and people who might do things like job scheduling.” For example, third-party developers like Platform Computing could come in and employ the XML API to build higher levels of abstraction around user workload management and application-tailored deployment.

Schwartz cited an HPC use case in the financial services context where a UCS set-up could be used for front or back office support during the day, and then re-provisioned at night for high end analytics. Chip design companies that currently isolate their Electronic Design Automation (EDA) workloads from their business-side applications is another example where a unified computing model could make a lot of sense. In Cisco’s view, such a model prevents companies from building two siloed infrastructures to support different computational requirements and would allow them to run their infrastructure something like Amazon runs EC2.

Returning to the server hardware, the one feature Cisco did reveal this week that pertains to HPC is the memory expansion technology. The feature will be cooked into the blade motherboards and will provide for significantly more memory capacity per server, making it ideal for virtualization and memory-bound applications. Although Schwartz couldn’t provide any details ahead of the Intel Nehalem EP launch, which is expected at the end of the month, he did say that the technology will be “ideal for large data-intensive workloads,” adding that Cisco has been talking with a number of people under NDA who are very interested in these large memory footprint systems.

The impact of Cisco’s UCS product line in an enterprise or HPC setting remains to be seen. The other system vendors are predictably blasé about the announcement, even if they are privately preparing their own server announcements and grand unification schemes for the datacenter. The release of Intel’s Nehalem EP chip later this month promises to set the server launch machine back into high gear, as OEMs scramble for position. But this time around, Cisco will have a lot more on the line.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire