IBM Debuts IC922 Power Server for AI Inferencing and Data Management

By John Russell

January 28, 2020

IBM today launched a Power9-based inference server – the IC922 – that features up to six Nvidia T4 GPUs, PCIe Gen 4 and OpenCAPI connectivity, and can accommodate up to 24 SFF drives in a 2U form factor. Paired with IBM’s AC922, which uses Nvidia V100 GPUs, IBM says it now offers a complete solution for AI workloads encompassing data management, training, and inferencing. IBM also says the new IC922 is priced at parity or better than comparable x86-based offerings.

The use of T4 GPUs leverages Turing Tensor cores for their varied mixed precision capabilities (FP32, FP16, INT8, INT4) best suited for inferencing and T4’s lower cost. Taken together, this helps IBM attack what analysts say is the fastest growing AI market segment and likely to become the largest by volume. By contrast, the AC922 leverages Nvidia V100 GPUs, which are better suited for traditional HPC and AI training workloads and more costly. The AC922 is famously built using the same architecture as Summit supercomputer, currently the fastest supercomputer in the world as ranked by the Top500 List (November 2019).

“The IC922 is focused on data, inferencing and cloud,” said Dylan Boday, IBM director of offering management, cognitive and scale-out systems, in a pre-briefing with HPCwire. “We’ll be able to drive up to 24 small form factor drives, and including in the not too distant future, 24 NVMe drives. When you combine 24 NVMe drives plus PCIe Gen 4 out to your network you have a very powerful story from a balanced perspective.

“At the rack level you get very high throughputs. This is interesting for AI because many people are starting to look at storage deployments and their tier hierarchy. You need ‘warm’ or low latency access to some storage capabilities. Secondly, launching it with up to six T4 Nvidia GPUs gives the clients flexibility [and] in the very near future we’re going to be going to eight [T4s], which will give you 33 percent better GPU density, than HP or Dell servers will be able to do in a 2U server.”

IBM also argues it’s able to leverage its threads-per-core advantage both generally and for container performance.

The new system will be available on February 7. IBM reports it is still “investigating expanding IC922 into the IBM public cloud in the future.” Official announcement of the IC922 came in a blog (Complete your AI puzzle with inference) today by Grace Liu, principal offering manager, Linux Infrastructure.

IBM has been promising a renewed product push in AI and the IC922 is likely just the first. “Our Linux focus market is one that is [delivering] a portfolio for the AI era,” Boday said. Many AI projects are failing, he contends, and one reason is the difficulty making the transition from a controlled training environment to the more chaotic data ingest and inference environment where compute requirements and skills are different. The IC922, he said, is optimized for inferencing and data management and will make the transition easier. Its modular design allows organizations to scale infrastructure to meet needs whether on- premises or in a private cloud environment.

Software, of course, is another key. At SC19, IBM promoted its Bayesian software expertise as an AI enabler. In conjunction with the IC922 announcement, Boday said, “We’re going to introduce an inferencing software [it] basically allows you to operationalize your inferencing.” Few details were discussed at the briefing and in response to an emailed question about those plans, IBM responded, “IBM believes that just as training required specialized software, so does AI inference. Our Watson Machine Learning Accelerator product family continues to evolve to leverage the latest capabilities of IBM Power Systems for AI, and we expect that to continue for inference.”

That sounds like a stay tuned message. Shown below are top line bullets from the official announcement:

While the immediate IC922 focus is on using T4s, IBM noted plans to support other accelerator types.

“I’m not going to discuss all the details,” said Boday. “There are some statements of direction around FPGAs from Xilinx and other ASIC capabilities, as those devices are moving to PCIe Gen 4. This is kind of that future-proof box, if they want to start to leverage an FPGA as an inferencing, or even a training device. There are hundreds of different acceleration capabilities coming into the market quite rapidly. This system should be able to capture them. As clients demands increase we’re able to respond in an agile method to add those to our server, and provide the best-of-breed solution for those types of acceleration capabilities.”

Unlike the AC922, which offers NVLink for CPU-GPU communication, the LC922 uses PCIe 4. “In AC922, we have NVLink – that’s because of the form factor and the capabilities built into the Nvidia Volta. There’s less demand on overall throughput to these types of [training systems],” said Boday. IBM chose to leverage PCIe density advantages for the IC922 and to provide OpenCAPI capability for future devices. In recent months there has been a fair amount of discussion around OpenCAPI and the newer CXL standard led by Intel with speculation around bringing compatibility between the two.

Boday said, “CXL is not a commercially viable technology at this point. What I would say is CXL is definitely on our radar. We have a board seat within the CXL Foundation. So as that gets more and more traction, we’re going to have a significant voice of influence there. I would argue that IBM [started activities] for coherence in acceleration several years ago with CAPI and OpenCAPI. Speaking to this box, specifically, it will have OpenCAPI capabilities. This is actually the first box that has OpenCAPI capabilities commercially available, and what we’ll see is the ability for developers to start to leverage a coherent, high throughput, low latency interface for all kinds of new devices.”

IBM reports it will soon have a developer board. “One of the first things we’re going to do is enable the marketplace with a Bittware FPGA-based a card. It’ll be available in the near future as well. That allows developers to take advantage of the low latency/high throughput, and then we’ll even have a card for them to start exploring on that as well in the very near future.”

How the new offering fits into the broader AI go-to-market strategy articulated by IBM exec Dave Turek at SC19 isn’t entirely clear. He suggested a strategy in which IBM would provide smaller AI systems able to leverage a client’s existing infrastructure to improve system and application performance. (For more see HPCwire article, SC19: IBM Changes Its HPC-AI Game Plan).

Liu wrote in her blog, “To showcase how the IC922 fits into the AI puzzle, the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) recently demonstrated how the IC922 and AC922 could be combined into a modular computing platform, creating an IBM POWER9-based supercomputer in a shipping container. This modular computing capability, initially installed at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory DoD Supercomputing Resource Center, will enable the DoD to redefine the term ‘edge’ to include deployment of an AI supercomputing capability anywhere in the world, including the battlefield.”

In a sense, this use of edge could encompass deployments similar to what Turek suggested in which IBM brings an AI cluster – as small as a single node, said Turek – to enhance performance of infrastructure already in place. He also implied IBM would offer AI systems specialized around specific functions such as security and systems management. Perhaps that’s a next step, with AC922-IC922 combinations offered to “supercharge” existing infrastructure.

Link to IBM blog: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/systems/complete-your-ai-puzzle-with-inference/

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