applications and NEC has designed its own mainframe system with impressive single-core data throughput and memory bandwidth. NEC has already sold several of these systems to research institutions in Japan, including the Tohoku University. Te NEC mainframe, known as
the SX-ACE, is the successor to the previous SX-9 system, delivering an order of magnitude better power efficiency compared with the older system. Te main focus
A SYSTEM
WITH COMPELLING COMPUTATIONAL DENSITY FOR THE COST AND POWER
of the developers at NEC is clearly single-threaded performance as the SX-9 system boasts what it claims is the world’s fastest single-core performance, with a processing speed of 64 GFlops. It also delivers a single-core memory bandwidth of 64 GBps.
lost between users and the current incumbent. I think not only is ARM a terrific platform, but I think it is a very good thing to have a viable alternative to the x86 processor.’ Major highlighted the potential
in pairing ARM 64 based servers with high-power GPUs, as is available in X-GENE, for the HPC industry. Sankaran echoed the point: ‘If you have a very low latency fabric across multiple nodes, that allows you to share data very effectively, which is a very important point for HPC.’ In Sankaran’s view, there is even a chance that ‘the entire data centre could be replaced by ARM.’ One point that Major stressed
was the ecosystem for ARM designs has a massive installed user base and he cited the collaboration and sharing of information as key drivers behind Applied Micro’s decision to get
www.scientific-computing.com l
involved with ARM at an early stage. Major said: ‘One of the things
that really makes ARM very interesting, even by the time that we got involved in 2010, was that ARM already had a significant installed user base for mobile devices and we could see the growth that was happening there and we could also see the development of an enormous developer community.’ However ARM and IBM are not
the only games in town. Tere are a number of other companies with equally bold solutions that would certainly be applicable to a number of situations within HPC but that do not necessarily have the same widespread adoption as IBM or ARM technologies. Texas Instruments (TI),
for instance, has been using digital signal processors (DSPs) to accelerate data-hungry
@scwmagazine
Texas Instruments Texas Instruments has developed servers that integrate its home- grown DSP technology and IP with (or without) ARM cores in a system that can be implemented as a single rack or scaled up into a fully integrated rack. Arnon Friedmann, business
manager at Texas Instruments, said: ‘Our systems use our C66x multicore DSPs with and without integrated ARM Cortex-A15 cores.’ Examples of these systems can be found in the Proliant M800 cartridge, part of HP’s Moonshot programme and through Prodrive who offer processing blade based of TI’s SOCs and ARM processors. Each blade contains six TI
processing units based on the KeyStone architecture. Each processing unit is composed of four ARM Cortex-A15 cores and 24 TI C66x digital signal processor cores, amounting to almost three trillion floating point operations per second (TFlops) of compute
performance per blade. Friedman commented that
these could be used to accelerate scientific computing by offloading computational code to the DSP using OpenCL and OpenMP, much in the same way as FPGA manufacturers can use their technology. (See ‘Will OpenCL open the gates for FPGAs?’, SCW Feb/Mar 2015) Freidman commented that
this combination of technology – specifically the HP Proliant M800 – provides a solution that is comparable to today’s HPC technology with the added benefits of faster data processing. Freidman said: ‘Tis yields a system with compelling computational density for the cost and power. PayPal has made several presentations about the benefits they see from using this system.’ Friedman concluded that
the move towards data-centric computing could benefit those with technology that is already designed from its inception to deal with large volumes of data. He said: ‘Tere is certainly an increase in data-centric computing and we do believe this is advantageous for us, based on the results PayPal has shown for their data-centric applications.’
Licensing model aids innovation One thing that many of these solutions have in common is the potential to work with or integrate ARM processors. Te wide selection of processors that are provided through ARMs partnerships provide a wide array of solutions which can be adapted for the server market, but also equally within the HPC industry. However, it is ARM’s traditions in mobile processing that have delivered a technology that is intrinsically linked with energy efficiency since it was first designed for battery-powered mobile devices. Underhill said: ‘Historically, the
strength with ARM is in portable mobile devices that are very power conscious; that said, the ARM architecture and road map has ➤
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IBM Power Systems/Andy King
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