Dell Announces Servers That Will Power Stampede Supercomputer

By Michael Feldman

September 19, 2012

Dell has launched a new line of servers aimed at “hyperscale” server setups. The PowerEdge C8000 series encompasses a shared infrastructure chassis that can mix and match three different flavors of servers: vanilla x86 CPU, coprocessor-accelerated, and high density storage. The new offering will be the basis for Stampede, the 10-petaflop supercomputer being built this year at The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

The PowerEdge C8000 represents Dell’s latest hyperscale servers, what are sometime called “density optimized” servers. They encompass blade systems and other multiple-server chassis setups. The C8000 falls into the latter category, resembling blades in its ability to support a shared server infrastructure, but without some of the bells and whistles such as redundancy, system management, and shared network I/O.

As such, this is not really aimed at traditional enterprise computing, but rather hyperscale environments, such as HPC, Web 2.0, and cloud computing (including, now, Hadoop-style big data apps), where maximizing compute and storage performance is paramount. Density optimized systems represent a big growth area for server makers, and most especially for Dell. Lately the company has done rather well for themselves in this category, garnering a 50-plus-percent market share, according to IDC.

With the C8000, Dell is looking to capitalize on that growth, using the latest chipsets and tweaking the architecture to max out on performance and storage per cubic meter. A 4U chassis is capable of housing up to eight single-width or four double-width “sleds” (Dell’s nomenclature for its shared infrastructure mini-blades), which slide vertically into the enclosure. Two extra sled slots are available for the power supplies.

There are three C8000 model in the series:

1. PowerEdge C8220: A single-width compute sled, with dual-socket Xeon E5-2600 (“Sandy Bridge”) CPUs, up to 256GB of memory, and a SATA port for a spinning disk or SSD.

2. PowerEdge C8220: A double-width compute sled, with the same CPU and memory set-up as the C8220, but with the addition of PCIe-based compute accelerators, in this case, either an NVIDIA Tesla GPU or a Xeon Phi (when available). Support for AMD FirePro GPUs is in the works. Two accelerators per sled can be accommodated.

3. PowerEdge C8000XD. A double-wide storage sled that can house up to 36TB of storage. It can be configured with 12 x 2.5” or 3.5” SAS/SATA drives or 24 x 2.5” SSDs. Everything is hot-pluggable.

Mixing and matching sled types in the chassis offers a lot of flexibility as far as balancing compute and storage capacity. Since the latest x86 CPUs and GPUs are supported, a chassis can deliver over 5 teraflops. (When Intel’s Xeon Phi and NVIDIA’s K20 GPU become available in few months, that should easily double.) On the other hand, maxing out storage will get you 144TB per chassis. And by the end of the year, Dell will offer an external power setup, which will free up the two power slots for even more compute and storage.

TACC’s Stampede supercomputer is Dell’s first public win for the C8000, and will include both storage and compute sleds. It will make particular use of the C8220X, incorporating the upcoming Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors and NVIDIA Kepler GPUs. The whole system is 10 petaflops (peak), but most that — 8 petaflops — is coming from the Xeon Phi silicon.

All told, there will close to 200 racks of Dell gear, spread out over about 10,000 square feet of floor space. Power draw is expected to be in the neighborhood of 5 megawatts, which is near tops in energy efficiency for a petascale cluster.

As it turned out, the C8000 was the right combination of feature set, energy efficiency and density required by TACC for the Stampede project. According to Brian Payne, Dell’s executive director of PowerEdge Servers, they beat out both HP and Appro for the contract. Both had systems with GPU and Xeon Phi support, but neither one provided the high-density storage modules present in the Dell offering. “The reason we won is that we could do it all in one form factor, whereas our competition couldn’t,” said Payne.

The entire C8000 product line is available for shipment this month. Stampede is currently under construction and is expected to go into production in January 2013.

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