Intel Takes a Bite Out of NVIDIA’s HPC Business

By Michael Feldman

September 22, 2011

The HPC contingent at NVIDIA must be stinging a bit today when they learned of Intel’s first big Many Integrated Core (MIC) win at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). The 10-petaflop super, named Stampede, is scheduled to boot up at the end of 2012, and will have 8 petaflops worth of Intel’s manycore Knights Corner coprocessors.

The NSF, who funded the system, is shelling out $2.5 million for thousands of MIC chips — money that would probably be going to NVIDIA’s bottom line had Intel stayed out of the HPC coprocessor biz. More disturbing for NVIDIA perhaps is that Intel doesn’t even have production parts in the field, but managed to convince the NSF, TACC and its partners that MIC was the way to go. When I spoke with TACC Director Jay Boisseau, he told me that the manycore chips they expect to be getting in the fall of 2012 are pre-production Knights Corner parts, but otherwise identical to the final version.

TACC telegraphed the deal in April when it signed up to port some science apps to Knights Ferry, the 32-core MIC prototype platform. They subsequently built a small cluster outfitted with Knights Ferry coprocessors and started kicking the tires. Apparently that went well enough to warrant the 8 petaflop buy-in.

NVIDIA managed to garner some token approval in the Stampede project. A hundred or so of its next-generation Kepler GPUs will be hooked into some of the nodes, but mostly to be used for remote visualization. There are also a couple of NVIDIA GPUs attached to each of the 16 nodes of Stampede’s big memory sub-cluster for data analytics-type workloads.

But the lion’s share of the supercomputer’s computational horsepower will come from Intel silicon. In addition to the 8 petaflops of MIC, 2 petaflops will be supplied by the upcoming Sandy Bridge CPUs, the 8-core Xeon E5, which will power the main cluster of 6,400 dual-socket nodes. An additional 5 petaflops of second-generation MIC coprocessors will be added in a couple years.

Knights Corner is going to have upwards of 50-cores and deliver something north of 1 teraflop of double precision number crunching performance, which should more or less match the new Kepler GPUs. The new NVIDIA parts are slated to arrive sometime in 2012, and it looks like volume production for Knights Corner won’t start until 2013. I don’t know how much of difference that will really make, especially in light of the choice TACC and the NSF just made.

Intel has more than 100 partners right now running their codes on the prototype MIC processors. The early returns appear to be positive, especially in regard to ease of programming. The x86 manycore architecture lends itself well to OpenMP-style programming, which gives it a built-in HPC customer base.

That’s something NVIDIA didn’t have when it began its GPGPU push into HPC in 2006. The GPU maker had to invent the CUDA software framework and then bring developers on board, which it managed to do quite successfully over the last five years. Intel, with its OpenMP-friendly architecture, will allow many HPC developers to leapfrog much of that onerous software transition phase.

Intel is pushing hard into HPC right now, noting opportunities like Stampede to sell barrels of chips with a single deal. But there is also the general feeling that the HPC market is an insatiable beast for high-powered processors. In a blog posted on Thursday by Joe Curley, Intel Director of Technical Computing, he lays out the rationale for Intel’s high performance computing enthusiasm:

Last week at the Intel Developer Forum, Kirk Skaugen, VP and GM of Intel’s Data Center and Connected Systems Group, talked about the huge growth that is expected in HPC in coming years. (For those who didn’t have a chance to attend IDF you can see video of Kirk’s presentation here -> part 1 & part 2). Our estimations show that by 2015, the world’s top 100 supercomputers will be powered by 2 million CPUs and by 2019 this number will reach 8 million CPUs. To give you a perspective, in 2010, Intel shipped about 8 million server processors in total.

That’s a rather compelling incentive for any chipmaker to be in the HPC business.

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