Zunicore Offers Bare Metal by the Hour

By Robert Gelber

May 10, 2012

Graphics accelerators are gaining traction among cloud computing providers seeking to distinguish their product from the bevy of look-alike offerings. For customers who can transform the extra performance kick into increased productivity, this is a welcome trend. PEER1 is the latest cloud vendor to join this bandwagon by offering GPU-equipped servers through their Zunicore division.

Zunicore logoZunicore’s GPU-based computing service will become generally available starting this July, when it will join the ranks of other cloud providers with GPUs in their portfolio, such as of SoftLayer and Penguin Computing.

HPC in the Cloud spoke with Greg Rusu, general manager of PEER1’s cloud division regarding the new offering.

Rusu pointed out that PEER1 has been offering dedicated GPU computing for the past 18 months, six months before Amazon began selling their quadruple extra large server. The recent news, however, comes from a new hourly billed, bare metal computing service, set to launch this July through their cloud-arm Zunicore. Currently still in beta, the process involves selecting physical servers, the amount of hours, what OS to use and which cloud resource pool to attach the nodes.

Servers are dual Xeon systems with a minimum 32GB of memory, 400GB local RAID storage with 10,000 RPM drives. NVIDIA Tesla M2050s and M2090s will provide for extra horsepower. Born from a hosting company, Zunicore will have the advantage of dedicating a 1Gbps Internet connection to each server.

Tipping their hat to those requiring instant gratification, the company claims a sub 15 minute provisioning time. Rusu also pointed out a feature aimed at flexibility: “If halfway through a rendering project or some sort of modeling on this end, you need to have additional GPUs brought online, it’s possible to do that. You just go get some more and those get provisioned and they show up in your private network.”

While the Zunicore service is not widely available, PEER1 has been supplying GPU compute power to a number of clients. Rusu mentioned a case involving an application on HBO’s True Blood website. End users upload an image of themselves, which then gets rendered into a clip of the show.

“That kind of technology is incredibly attractive to a lot of rendering companies that we work with,” he continued, “What they want to do is have incredibly short provision times so they can take rendering jobs, throw it on top of a GPU, have that stuff completed and brought back within an interactive session.”

It’s still unknown what financial impact Zunicor will have on PEER1’s bottom line. The ability to offer users short-term compute power without infrastructure investments is a primary advantage for cloud providers. “We are seeing a lot of demand and we are hearing a lot of demand. What we want to see is how does the true hourly billing work out financially.”

Zunicore will be demonstrating their offering next week at GTC.

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!

2024 Winter Classic: Meet Team Morehouse

April 17, 2024

Morehouse College? The university is well-known for their long list of illustrious graduates, the rigor of their academics, and the quality of the instruction. They were one of the first schools to sign up for the Winter Read more…

MLCommons Launches New AI Safety Benchmark Initiative

April 16, 2024

MLCommons, organizer of the popular MLPerf benchmarking exercises (training and inference), is starting a new effort to benchmark AI Safety, one of the most pressing needs and hurdles to widespread AI adoption. The sudde Read more…

Quantinuum Reports 99.9% 2-Qubit Gate Fidelity, Caps Eventful 2 Months

April 16, 2024

March and April have been good months for Quantinuum, which today released a blog announcing the ion trap quantum computer specialist has achieved a 99.9% (three nines) two-qubit gate fidelity on its H1 system. The lates Read more…

Mystery Solved: Intel’s Former HPC Chief Now Running Software Engineering Group 

April 15, 2024

Last year, Jeff McVeigh, Intel's readily available leader of the high-performance computing group, suddenly went silent, with no interviews granted or appearances at press conferences.  It led to questions -- what's Read more…

Exciting Updates From Stanford HAI’s Seventh Annual AI Index Report

April 15, 2024

As the AI revolution marches on, it is vital to continually reassess how this technology is reshaping our world. To that end, researchers at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) put out a yearly report to t Read more…

Crossing the Quantum Threshold: The Path to 10,000 Qubits

April 15, 2024

Editor’s Note: Why do qubit count and quality matter? What’s the difference between physical qubits and logical qubits? Quantum computer vendors toss these terms and numbers around as indicators of the strengths of t Read more…

MLCommons Launches New AI Safety Benchmark Initiative

April 16, 2024

MLCommons, organizer of the popular MLPerf benchmarking exercises (training and inference), is starting a new effort to benchmark AI Safety, one of the most pre Read more…

Exciting Updates From Stanford HAI’s Seventh Annual AI Index Report

April 15, 2024

As the AI revolution marches on, it is vital to continually reassess how this technology is reshaping our world. To that end, researchers at Stanford’s Instit Read more…

Intel’s Vision Advantage: Chips Are Available Off-the-Shelf

April 11, 2024

The chip market is facing a crisis: chip development is now concentrated in the hands of the few. A confluence of events this week reminded us how few chips Read more…

The VC View: Quantonation’s Deep Dive into Funding Quantum Start-ups

April 11, 2024

Yesterday Quantonation — which promotes itself as a one-of-a-kind venture capital (VC) company specializing in quantum science and deep physics  — announce Read more…

Nvidia’s GTC Is the New Intel IDF

April 9, 2024

After many years, Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) was back in person and has become the conference for those who care about semiconductors and AI. I Read more…

Google Announces Homegrown ARM-based CPUs 

April 9, 2024

Google sprang a surprise at the ongoing Google Next Cloud conference by introducing its own ARM-based CPU called Axion, which will be offered to customers in it Read more…

Computational Chemistry Needs To Be Sustainable, Too

April 8, 2024

A diverse group of computational chemists is encouraging the research community to embrace a sustainable software ecosystem. That's the message behind a recent Read more…

Hyperion Research: Eleven HPC Predictions for 2024

April 4, 2024

HPCwire is happy to announce a new series with Hyperion Research  - a fact-based market research firm focusing on the HPC market. In addition to providing mark 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Eyes on the Quantum Prize – D-Wave Says its Time is Now

January 30, 2024

Early quantum computing pioneer D-Wave again asserted – that at least for D-Wave – the commercial quantum era has begun. Speaking at its first in-person Ana Read more…

GenAI Having Major Impact on Data Culture, Survey Says

February 21, 2024

While 2023 was the year of GenAI, the adoption rates for GenAI did not match expectations. Most organizations are continuing to invest in GenAI but are yet to Read more…

Intel’s Xeon General Manager Talks about Server Chips 

January 2, 2024

Intel is talking data-center growth and is done digging graves for its dead enterprise products, including GPUs, storage, and networking products, which fell to Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire