Selectively Add GPU Acceleration without Ripping Apart Your Data Center

By Louis Vistola

September 26, 2016

The need for speedy results is critical to business success in energy exploration, manufacturing, life sciences, financial services, and other industries. Companies in these fields are looking for ways to leverage their hardware acceleration to run Big Data and HPC applications faster.

To that end, great efforts are going into modernizing code by parallelizing computations to run on systems that meld the latest generation of Intel Xeon CPUs with NVIDIA GPUs, AMD GPUs, or Intel Xeon PHIs. However, whether designing a complete system from scratch or complementing the performance of an existing HPC installation by adding GPUs, there are many issues to consider.

Cubix has carefully considered the issues and developed a solution called Cubix Xpander Fiber-Connect (XF8). By merging two technologies, high-speed transmission over fiber optic and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe), Intel Xeon CPUs can be connected to GPUs.  Cubix XF8 provides a secure, cost-efficient way to leverage existing equipment.

Accommodating more parallel operations

PCIe Expansion is used to connect high performance storage, GPUs, and other external elements to HPC host servers. The high performance serial link afforded via PCIe and the additional expansion slots provided by PCIe Expansion offers many benefits. These benefits include:

  • The ability to overcome a lack of expansion slots in an HPC system
  • Availability of numerous high performance serial links to multiple external devices
  • Use of peer-to-peer communication within the expansion system
  • A more modular system design where the expansion system is focused on the specific I/O and processing elements independent of the choice of the host system.

Over the years, PCIe Expansion solutions have proved particularly useful for applications that make use of high-performance GPU computational nodes. They are well-liked in the HPC field because they give organizations the flexibility to choose a host system and then match and partition the I/O system to a specific application.

As today’s Big Data and HPC applications push performance requirements, make use of ever-larger datasets, and try to leverage the technology advances in the newest Xeon processors and NVIDIA Pascal-based GPUs, finding the smartest, most cost-efficient solutions to expand data processing power is critical to keeping a company on the cutting edge.

Finding the right technology partner

Companies today need more robust and more flexible PCIe Expansion solutions than they have traditionally used in the past. Choosing a technology partner that has the insight, experience, and best solution for your ROI is critical.

Cubix has long been a provider of PCIe Expansion solutions. Cubix XF8 is designed to overcome the challenges companies face when trying to add GPUs to accelerate their HPC and Big Data workloads. Unique, thoughtful solutions are what Cubix does.

One obstacle to deployment for PCIe Expansion solutions has been the lack of rack space. Solutions based on copper wire connections had to be very close to the servers, within 8 inches. In crowded data centers, this meant physically relocating some equipment to different racks to accommodate the expansion unit. Cubix avoids this problem by combining PCIe Expansion with a fiber connection. This allows up to 150 feet in distance to find space for the GPU populated Cubix XF8. XF8 can go above, below, or across the hall from the CPU host. Fiber does not have the same limitations as a copper connection.

The Cubix XF8 lets organizations with hundreds of rack mounted computers add NVIDIA Pascal-based GPUs or other accelerators per node without moving the hosts or purchasing entirely new infrastructure. With XF8, each host can connect to 8 GPU cards without incurring the disruption associated with tearing apart and modifying existing system racks. The Cubix XF8 offers a cost-efficient way to boost application performance and speed the time to results.

Given the critical nature of the workloads involved, Cubix XF8 features redundant power to enhance reliability. The XF8 has been thoroughly tested with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs as well as other accelerators for performance and stability.

To ensure optimized system performance, Cubix works closely with each customer to begin the process of connecting Cubix XF8. Cubix team members first ask the customer to supply one of its hosts for testing along with the applications or application functions they will be running.  Cubix lab tests the existing host to confirm it supports XF8. Once the lab completes successful testing, Cubix on-site testing is undertaken.

Simply put, the Cubix XF8 is ideal for organizations that want to reap the full potential of today’s most advanced GPUs. With a few simple steps, NVIDIA or AMD GPU acceleration, as well as acceleration using Intel PHIs, can be added to existing hosts. This lets companies retain their infrastructure investment and it brings the business benefits of running the most demanding workloads in faster times. Contact Cubix today, and scale up to harness GPU power.

For more information, visit the Cubix website at xf8.cubix.com/ or contact Sales at 1-800-829-0550.

 

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