Sandia to Take Delivery of World’s Largest Arm System

By Tiffany Trader

June 18, 2018

While the enterprise remains circumspect on prospects for Arm servers in the datacenter, the leadership HPC community is taking a bolder, brighter view of the x86 server CPU alternative. Amongst current and planned Arm HPC installations – i.e., the innovative Mont-Blanc project, led by Bull/Atos, the ‘Isambard’ Cray XC50 going into the University of Bristol, and commitments from both Japan and France among others — HPE is announcing that it will supply the United States National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) with a 2.3 petaflops peak Arm-based system, named Astra. On track for deployment at Sandia National Labs later this year as part of the NNSA’s Arm-centric Vanguard project, Astra will be the world’s largest Arm system ever built, according to HPE.

HPE Apollo 70 chassis

Based on the Apollo 70 servers announced by HPE at SC17, Astra will encompass more than 145,000 Cavium ThunderX2 cores in 2,592 dual-socket servers, with four compute nodes arranged in a dense 2U form factor. The system will employ a total of 5,184 Cavium 64-bit ARMv8-A ThunderX2 28-core, 2.0 Ghz processors, which have a TDP of 150 watts.

The ThunderX2 line, which became generally available in May, includes SKUs with as many as 32 cores, with clock speeds up to 2.5 MHz (plus a bump for turbo mode). In an interview with HPCwire, Mike Vildibill, vice president of HPE’s Advanced Technology Group, describes the 28-core, 2.0 Ghz CPU as “the Goldilocks part that provided the full memory performance that [Sandia] needed in a package that perfectly fit the price requirements of the system as well.”

The CPUs will be connected with Mellanox EDR InfiniBand in very bandwidth intensive configuration. With eight memory channels on each Cavium ThunderX2 Arm processor compared to six on today’s traditional CPUs, the Apollo servers offer 33 percent more memory bandwidth than Intel x86 servers. Those eight channels will support 8GB dual-rank DIMMs, providing 332 TB aggregate memory capacity and 885 TB per second of aggregate memory bandwidth. Sandia could have opted for higher-capacity DIMMs, but was able to satisfy its memory bandwidth requirements at a more optimum price point.

Vildibill, who is co-PI on HPE’s PathForward (exascale-focused) activities, emphasized the data-centric nature of the system, and drew a line from The Machine research program to Vanguard Astra to the company’s exascale targets. The prototype systems HPE built for The Machine were based on very early examples of the ThunderX2 processor, tracing back to when the technology was still part of Broadcom’s Vulcan brand (before Cavium acquired the Vulcan IP). Under HPE’s Comanche development program (which would become the Apollo 70 line), HPE delivered prototype systems to a number of DOE labs. Sandia has been running a rack of those systems for eight months, giving it lead time to begin the software porting and demonstration necessary to make Astra a usable system, according to Vildibill.

You can see how Astra (referenced as Vanguard-1) fits into Sandia’s Vanguard project– it’s ARM-centric co-design strategy with Los Alamos and Livermore Labs – in this slide from a March 2018 meeting.

The mission of the Vanguard project is to expand NNSA’s tri-lab HPC ecosystem by developing technologies viable for future ATS/CTS platforms supporting Advanced Simulation and Computing codes. It is a requirement of Vanguard systems that they be “large enough to serve as proof of concept for future Advanced Technology Systems, and sufficient scale to interest production multi-physics application teams.”

“We are committed to fielding the most advanced technologies as part of the Vanguard program,” said James Laros, Vanguard project lead at Sandia National Laboratories, in HPE’s official announcement. “We are collaborating with HPE to advance the Arm ecosystem and prove the viability of this architecture to support our national security mission.”

The Astra design is part of the larger longer term path to exascale for NNSA and for HPE. One of the biggest draws of Arm, according to Vildibill, isn’t necessarily the energy efficiency that has been associated with the platform, but rather the innovation cycle that is possible. “Innovation for Arm-based systems can be accelerated at a faster rate compared to the innovation cycle for processors that are being used for both HPC and enterprise markets at the same time,” Vildibill remarked. “It’s very difficult for some vendors to build a CPU that is aggressively adopting all the newest technology while also supporting a very long tail of legacy applications that go throughout the enterprise and so the [increased number of] memory channels is just one example. As we look out to exascale, we clearly see that today’s architectures cannot get us to exascale in a 20-30 MW envelope in the future; it just can’t, and that we absolutely see the need for innovation and some invention between now and exascale.”

The power footprint of Astra’s compute nodes will be about 1.2 MW, according to HPE, which compared to an equivalent top system of today, stands at about half the power consumption and three times more memory bandwidth.

Astra is also outfitted with an all-flash Lustre file system, essentially acting as a burst buffer tier, based on HPE’s Apollo 4520 platform, that Vildibill calls “Lustre in a box.” It’s a 4U box with a usable capacity of 366 TB, enabling nearly 250 Gigabytes per second of bandwidth.

Keeping Astra cool is the job of HPE’s new MCS-300 Cooling Unit, which company literature describes as “a liquid-to-air heat exchanger and fan system that removes heat generated by rack-installed IT equipment.”

The announcement from HPE and Sandia Labs is a prominent feather in Arm’s cap but Cavium’s implementation of Arm isn’t the only Intel-alternative on the field: AMD’s x86 Eypc server chip and IBM’s Power CPU are also in play, and RISC-V is gathering some steam as well. Vildibill affirmed there are many degrees of freedom in this discussion. “HPE is exploring a number of architectures as part of our exascale development activities,” he told us. “I would say absolutely exascale is not only an Arm play, but we do believe Arm is one of several emerging technologies that are relevant in exascale.”

This increased processor diversity plus above-average M&A churn have created disruption in the technology space that everyone is facing. ThunderX maker Cavium is currently being acquired by Marvell, which means three companies will have held the Vulcan/ThunderX2 technology in as many years, but given the healthy investments coming from the global HPC community, the processor’s prospects are looking good.

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!

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from its predecessors, including the red-hot H100 and A100 GPUs. 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. While Nvidia may not spring to mind when thinking of the quant Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet the HPE Mentors

March 18, 2024

The latest installment of the 2024 Winter Classic Studio Update Show features our interview with the HPE mentor team who introduced our student teams to the joys (and potential sorrows) of the HPL (LINPACK) and accompany 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 field was normalized for boys in 1969 when the Apollo 11 missi Read more…

Apple Buys DarwinAI Deepening its AI Push According to Report

March 14, 2024

Apple has purchased Canadian AI startup DarwinAI according to a Bloomberg report today. Apparently the deal was done early this year but still hasn’t been publicly announced according to the report. Apple is preparing Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimization algorithms to iteratively refine their parameters until Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named 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…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimizat Read more…

PASQAL Issues Roadmap to 10,000 Qubits in 2026 and Fault Tolerance in 2028

March 13, 2024

Paris-based PASQAL, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum computers, yesterday issued a roadmap for delivering systems with 10,000 physical qubits in 2026 a Read more…

India Is an AI Powerhouse Waiting to Happen, but Challenges Await

March 12, 2024

The Indian government is pushing full speed ahead to make the country an attractive technology base, especially in the hot fields of AI and semiconductors, but Read more…

Charles Tahan Exits National Quantum Coordination Office

March 12, 2024

(March 1, 2024) My first official day at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was June 15, 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 loc Read more…

AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day

March 11, 2024

What impact does AI bias have on women and girls? What can people do to increase female participation in the AI field? These are some of the questions the tech 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…

Analyst Panel Says Take the Quantum Computing Plunge Now…

November 27, 2023

Should you start exploring quantum computing? Yes, said a panel of analysts convened at Tabor Communications HPC and AI on Wall Street conference earlier this y 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…

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

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…

Training of 1-Trillion Parameter Scientific AI Begins

November 13, 2023

A US national lab has started training a massive AI brain that could ultimately become the must-have computing resource for scientific researchers. Argonne N 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…

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…

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…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire