IBM’s New Deal Captures Refocused HPC Strategy

By Nicole Hemsoth

January 29, 2014

It’s been quite a month of news for IBM, with the sale of its x86 business to Lenovo, followed by some intense questioning about what this means for their vision (and future) with HPC customers in academia and government in particular. And while some might call this the centerpiece of a shift in strategy, something bigger is looming on Big Blue’s horizon, and the processor piece is only one sliver of the story arc.

But Dave Turek, IBM’s Vice President of Advanced Computing says that ultimately, and yes, even after the Lenovo news, their business will march along to the HPC drum, but with some new beats added to an old tune. After all, as he reminds, IBM was never the only x86 vendor supplying servers to the government and universities. Further, these commodity approaches might not be as well equipped for a data-defined future–one that Turek says requires a honed sense of overall workflow instead of mere flops. Accordingly, IBM is unfurling a grander approach to big science (and big business) problems that blends subtler hues into the HPC server portrait–leading to what might be a completely different picture in the years to come.

Specifically, IBM will be melding some (yet unnamed) upcoming technologies with their vision of data-driven systems that make the concept of workflow and end function of the user requirement paramount. The challenge there isn’t going to be about technology as much as merging these concepts and moving “classic HPC” from its traditional focus. For IBM, the shift involves a wide-ranging view of the entire data lifecycle and, not surprisingly, significant investment in Power.

He noted that IBM’s proposition going forward is “to attack the entire workflow from the perspective of how data is acquired, managed, governed and analyzed in many different areas of the HPC infrastructure, not just the server. The consequence of that is that the nature of what servers look like in the future might change a bit.”

In other words, what IBM sees going forward looks a lot like verbiage around Watson and their Smarter Planet array of technologies—parallels that Turek made explicit during a conversation this week in the wake of some news about a new partnership with Texas A&M that meshes data analytics with high performance computing via IBM-hosted (cloud-delivered) Blue Gene/Q power managed with Platform Computing and leveraging GPFS.  This provides a way for the company to show off the blend of all of its priority tools says Turek, from the file system, the Platform software, and the ability to drive data on a range of applications. The collaboration is, according to IBM, aimed at “improving extraction of Earth-based energy resources, facilitating the smart energy grid, accelerating materials development, improving disease identification and tracking in animals, and fostering better understanding and monitoring of our global food supplies.” Again, all of which have elements aligned with IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative.

“All the servers are on the periphery and the data is in the center of the proposition,” explained Turek. We wanted Texas A&M’s strategy to mirror IBM’s strategy towards data-centric high performance computing that creates an infrastructure that lets them bring different architectures to address the problems at hand. This deal is characteristic of one of the shifts that’s happening in IBM’s overall HPC strategy, he noted. “The goal is to progressively engage clients in collaboration as a way to help us better understand different market segments and problem domains and to build better products… It’s about the right tool for the right problem” says Turek.

Even though this is essentially a collaboration rooted in research HPC, he stressed that the BlueGene piece isn’t the keystone of the story—it’s all about the data problems that are being addressed in novel, practical and workflow-conscious ways. “There’s a needed integration between big data and classic HPC technologies. These are inseparable concept for us going forward. Too often, players in the HPC space have cherry picked an algorithm or set of partial differential equations and they sort of thump their chests and say, ‘look how fast we made this go.’ The fact is, if in the general workflow of interest to the client, that piece of work went from a day to a second, you’ve just improved the overall performance of the much larger workflow by only a few percent.”

“Our industry has been hamstrung by self-defining itself as a vehicle to produce devices that try to optimally solve collections of partial differential equations or nonlinear/linear equations. But that can be such a small part of the overall workflow that constitutes an HPC workflow that we’ve ended up providing a degree of disservice to the industry at large.”

Turek says that when IBM introduced the concept of workflow a couple of years ago in their exascale conversations with the DoE and others, they made it clear that when you begin to look at workflows, it’s necessary to explicitly factor in data management, data flows and data organization as much as it does to pay attention to algorithms per se. When asked how this changes the direction for IBM’s HPC systems of the future, especially without an x86 play for some of their core HPC customers in government and academia, he noted that the data-centric architecture goes far beyond the micro-architecture view of evaluating systems. “You have to take into account where data sits, how its moved, and where its processed. Sure, there’s a processor involved, but there are a lot of ways to attack these problems from an overall workflow perspective.”

The final word from IBM is a steady firm commitment to HPC, a commitment that absolutely extends to the government and academic spaces (those areas being the focus of the question). “We are materially engaged with them in terms of co-design activities for future investments and our own investment in our Power servers to make sure that we’re offering them the best solutions in the world going forward. We’ll continue with these investments in HPC. We will be focused in terms of getting that investment centered on our Power technology and we’ll preserve our business relationship with Lenovo to provide the Intel-based technologies that customers we encounter might require.”

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!

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…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a 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…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi 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