HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING


Integrating intelligence


ROBERT ROE LOOKS AT THE ROLE OF INTEGRATORS TO DELIVER AND SUPPORT HPC SYSTEMS


In today’s HPC market, which provides a wide array of hardware options, the role of integrators is


increasingly important as their expertise can help users to choose, set up and maintain HPC systems. One example of the options available to


HPC users can be seen in the processor market. Although Intel still dominates the field there are now credible alternatives from IBM’s openPOWER, AMD and ARM. While there is no one correct choice for every user or application, integrators can help to select the technologies most suited to a client’s budget and portfolio of applications. Today a HPC system is much more than a collection of CPUs and, as the complexity of these systems increases, it is essential to balance computation with networking, storage and memory in order to deliver sustained application performance. ‘Integrators have become more


important as HPC systems have become more complex. There is a requirement to balance the compute and the I/O to make the system efficient, and to get intelligent scheduling to ensure that time is not wasted – there isn’t a tier-one provider that does all that,’ explained Julian Fielden, managing director of OCF.


4 Scientific Computing World December 2017/January 2018


Selecting the right technology ‘It’s the role of the integrator to bring together the best of breed technologies and ensure they are all balanced and work well together with ongoing support. This ongoing support is invaluable as our customers don’t want to be dealing with numerous vendors on a regular basis,’ added Fielden. Beyond the sale of components, and support and maintenance, Fielden also stressed that integrators provide expertise to help users get the most out of their computing system. ‘It is not just the technology that is becoming more complex. Systems are now becoming multi-purpose, and are required to be production machines serving internal customers – like an internal cloud,’ said Fielden. Users increasingly want to do more with


their systems; this could be reflected in cloud technology but also data portals or remote access to specific parts of the facility, or connections to other computing systems. This is particularly true in academic centres users but can also apply to enterprise users. ‘There’s a far greater requirement


for things other than the ‘tin’ to make it work efficiently. That’s why there needs to be an integrator, as opposed to a reseller,’ added Fielden. ‘The HPC system needs to be ‘designed’ not just sold for purpose. Without the services of a good integrator you risk getting a bag of bits, instead of a balanced system.’ It is not just computing hardware that


integrators can help to set up when designing a new system, as demonstrated by a recent contract awarded to German based integrator Megware – which was selected to provide a hot water-cooled


HPC system, ‘CooLMUC 3,’ at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center (Lrz) in Garching. As the name CooLMUC 3 suggests, this is the third generation of of the CooLMUC computer cluster at Leibniz, which is part of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities Garching research centre. This is the second time that Megware has supplied a CooLMUC system, which is designed to provide very high energy- efficiency. The system was developed at the


company’s technology development centre in Chemnitz and based on its own hardware and software. With the first generation of CooLMUC, Megware proved back in 2011 that it is possible


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