Academia and Industry Collaborate to Drive UK Supercomputer Adoption

@Hewlett @Arm, @SUSE, and three leading UK universities establish one of the largest Arm-based #supercomputer deployments in the world to advance digitisation of UK economy April 16, 2018 07:45 ET | Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company LONDON, April 16, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE) today announced a collaboration with Arm, SUSE, and three leading UK universities to accelerate the adoption of supercomputer applications in the UK. The partners will jointly develop and deploy one of the largest Arm-based high performance computing (HPC) installations in the world, available to both industry and academia, to build applications that drive economic growth and productivity as outlined in the UK government’s Industrial Strategy. Designed, built and supported by HPE, the deployment will be spread across three sites at Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Bristol, and the University of Leicester. The installation is due to be completed in summer 2018 and is part of a project known as Catalyst UK which will run for three years. Supercomputers increasingly play a crucial role in digital transformation due to their capability of simulating the physical world and generating actionable insights from vast amounts of data. The economic benefits that can be realised through applications such as artificial intelligence (AI) – for which HPC is a foundational technology – are significant.1 According to a Hyperion Research estimate, every dollar invested in HPC technology is associated with an average $551 in additional revenue and $52 in added profit for private-sector firms2. Catalyst UK to propel Arm HPC ecosystem and exascale computing in the UK To further drive supercomputer adoption in the UK in general, and in the commercial sector in particular, the Catalyst UK programme will cooperate with the UK industry to jointly develop critical applications and workflows to best exploit the Arm system capabilities. The programme will also provide training for researchers, equipping them with the knowledge and skills required to successfully and productively work with Arm-based systems in the future – with a specific focus on exascale computing, i.e. computers that can execute a billion billion calculations per second. “Today’s announcement marks a major step forward in boosting collaboration between the government and business to harness the power of innovation in supercomputing and AI,” said Sam Gyimah MP, Science Minister. “Through our modern Industrial Strategy, AI Grand Challenge and upcoming Sector Deal, the UK will lead the AI and data revolution. Doing so has the potential to increase the UK’s competitiveness in emerging industries around the world, grow our economy and create the high value jobs we need to build a Britain fit for the future.” The key focus of the Catalyst UK programme is to investigate and showcase the potential of Arm-based HPC installations. This is one of the current approaches to overcome the limitations of traditional computer architectures and offer a better price-performance ratio for modern workloads and applications. This includes AI, which needs to process large amounts of data and requires extremely high memory bandwidth, and exascale computing, which requires HPC systems to be hundreds of times faster and more efficient than today’s fastest supercomputers.  The three supercomputer clusters at EPCC, University of Bristol and University of Leicester will in total run more than 12,000 Arm-based cores, hosted by HPE Apollo 70 HPC systems. The clusters at each university will be largely identical, consisting of 64 HPE Apollo 70 systems, each equipped with two 32 core Cavium ThunderX2 processors, 128GB of memory composed of 16 DDR4 DIMMs with Mellanox InfiniBand interconnects. The operating system is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for HPC. Each cluster is expected to occupy two computer racks and consume a total of approximately 30KW of power. Mike Vildibill, VP, Advanced Technologies Group at Hewlett Packard Enterprise said: “We are currently seeing an insatiable demand for compute performance, as companies seek to gain intelligent and actionable insights from their data. As we embark on the global race towards more powerful and eventually exascale systems, new approaches and technologies are needed to tackle some of the key challenges in achieving these levels of performance, such as rising energy consumption.    “HPE is excited to work with Arm, SUSE, and other key partners to offer the HPC community a fresh alternative for high performance computing which we believe will stimulate the industry to develop increasingly performant and efficient supercomputing solutions.  By investing in this deployment through the Catalyst UK programme, HPE and our partners will drive both digital transformation and sustainable economic growth through new innovation and scientific discovery.” Drew Henry, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Business Unit, Arm said: “Arm has a long history of close collaboration with industry and academia that has resulted in some very innovative new ideas and technologies. We’re particularly excited now to provide UK researchers and many others greater access to Arm high-performance server technology. The unmatched scalability, high performance, and low-energy consumption of these solutions directly addresses the challenges of large-scale computing and will fuel innovation in cloud, HPC, and AI applications.” Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo, CTO at SUSE said: “The open, non-proprietary, and highly collaborative approach to the Catalyst UK programme, enabled by the SUSE Linux operating system and SUSE Enterprise Storage, will be a key factor in the project’s success. Increasing the exposure of open source operating systems and tools to student and other real-world users and workloads will significantly improve and enhance the software available on Arm-based architectures. By building a broad ecosystem with HPE, Arm, and Cavium, that caters to the specific needs important to the UK market, we can help deliver the required knowledge, skills and capabilities that will shape the adoption of HPC and AI technologies in the UK.” About Hewlett Packard Enterprise Hewlett Packard Enterprise is a global technology leader focused on developing intelligent solutions that allow customers to capture, analyze and act upon data seamlessly from edge to core to cloud. HPE enables customers to accelerate business outcomes by driving new business models, creating new customer and employee experiences, and increasing operational efficiency today and into the future.

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/04/16/1471927/0/en/Academia-and-Industry-Collaborate-to-Drive-UK-Supercomputer-Adoption.html

ARM Reaches Into the Data Center, Competes With Intel

When talking about #softwaredefined networking ( #SDN) and network functions virtualization ( #NFV), we often talk about software that can run on x86 servers. The term x86 refers to instruction set architectures for silicon chips. Most x86 servers that run SDN and NFV software use chips from either @Intel or @AMD. But that could change as @ARM is making a concerted effort to take market share in this segment. ARM doesn’t make chips. It creates the intellectual property (IP) building blocks for a chip. And while x86 refers to an instruction set architecture, ARM also has a set of defined instructions. But instead of manufacturing chips, ARM gives the instruction set architecture to its customers — such as @Qualcomm, @Broadcom, @NXP, and @Cavium — and those companies manufacture the chips.

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/arm-reaches-data-center-competes-intel/2018/04/

Microsoft Partners With Qualcomm To Open Floodgates For ARM-Based Data Center

The ARM chip architecture reigns supreme in smartphones. For years, companies have tried to port the ARM architecture over to the data center world, but had little success. Intel and its x86 processor architecture have the backend computing infrastructure locked down with around 99% market share. That's likely about to change.

#Microsoft, owner of some of the biggest data center infrastructure in the world, is getting behind mobile chip giant #Qualcomm 's fledgling #ARM server efforts. This marks one of the most significant commitments from a major cloud vendor for an ARM-based processor. The goal is to get a Qualcomm-based server powering Microsoft's #Azure cloud and other internal services.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2017/03/08/microsoft-partners-with-qualcomm-to-open-floodgates-for-arm-based-data-center/#600447f397cd

Why did SoftBank buy ARM? To prepare for our robot overlords, of course

The Japanese tech conglomerate #SoftBank announced yesterday that it was buying the chip maker #ARM for a whopping $31.4 billion in cash. There are some straightforward explanations for why this deal took place. The UK's decision to exit the European Union caused the value of the pound to plummet, making a cash takeover much cheaper now than any time in recent history. And ARM has also been growing rapidly while generating profits. But there is another, more interesting rationale behind the acquisition. SoftBank's founder and CEO, Masayoshi Son, has a reputation for eclectic interests and big bets. While most of his business career has focused on the telecom sector, his purchase of ARM brings SoftBank deep into the world of hardware. That would position it to reap the rewards of new explosion in computing driven by the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence. Here's a revealing quote he gave to the Nikkei Asian Review last month:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/19/12225082/softbank-arm-singularity-masayoshi-son

SoftBank is buying ARM for $32 billion — because everything’s a computer now

Japan’s #SoftBank is buying U.K.-based chip design firm #ARMHoldings for about $32 billion, according to the FT. Why? Everything is a computer now, and ARM has been one of the winners of the mobile revolution. ARM designs chips — but doesn’t actually make them — for a huge variety of devices. It dominates the market for smartphones — Apple is a big client, as is Samsung — and its chips shows up in other consumer gadgets, as well as more-industrial-like devices and “internet of things” ( #IoT ) sensors. The number of chips containing ARM processors reached almost 15 billion in 2015, up from about six billion in 2010.

http://www.recode.net/2016/7/17/12210564/softbank-arm-holdings-deal?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTW1Rd1lqY3hNV05sTm1ReiIsInQiOiJMKzVMU21ONWRBamZ6SXVUdzU3OWUzakVUWjJKU2MxakRncFRzQ0hlcXNVTFlKZzR3QklXQ2N2NDNMWlhFVUxFZVg3OFwvSU4xUXk2UWlpTHRPUDZXdXNjdGxaMTJQVCtRU0QwVjNranBOU289In0%3D

AMD and Key Industry Partners Welcome the AMD Opteron(TM) A1100 SoC to the 64-Bit ARM Datacenter Arena Launch Marks Era of Innovation, Choice and Scalable Performance in Servers, Embedded Networking and Storage Applications

#AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) marks a major step toward delivering choice and innovation in the datacenter with the launch of the AMD #Opteron™ A1100 System-on-Chip (SoC), formerly codenamed "Seattle." Jointly with its software and hardware partners, AMD is accelerating time-to-deployment of ARM®-based systems and driving forward ecosystem support for ARM in the datacenter.

"The ecosystem for ARM in the datacenter is approaching an inflection point, and the addition of AMD's high-performance processor is another strong step forward for customers looking for a datacenter-class ARM solution," said Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager, Enterprise Solutions, AMD. "The macro trend of convergence between networking, storage and servers is an important catalyst in this evolution. Customers now have access to 64-bit ARM processors from the only silicon provider that also has decades of experience delivering professional enterprise and embedded products."

The AMD Opteron A1100 SoC represents a key milestone for establishing ARM in the datacenter as well. "The AMD Opteron A1100 processor brings a new choice in scalability across network infrastructure and datacenters," said Lakshmi Mandyam, director of server systems and ecosystems, ARM. "AMD brings recognized expertise in the server and embedded markets, making them an ideal partner to deliver a 64-bit ARM processor with the impressive balance of performance and power-efficiency to address an increasingly diverse set of workloads."

The AMD Opteron A1100 Series SoC is the first 64-bit ARM Cortex-A57-based platform from AMD. Utilizing ARM Cortex®-A57 processors with high-speed network and storage connectivity and outstanding energy efficiency, the AMD Opteron A1100 Series SoC delivers a balanced total cost of ownership for storage, Web and networking workloads.

AMD Opteron A1100 Series SoC specifications:

The AMD Opteron A1100 SoC is powering enterprise-class systems from SoftIron with its Overdrive 3000 system for developers, as well as an upcoming lineup of software-defined storage solutions taking advantage of the processor's rich feature set.

"The secret of the AMD Opteron A1100 SoC's appeal is not just the cores, it's everything around the cores," said Norman Fraser, CEO of SoftIron. "If you've got an application where you need to move large amounts of data around quickly, you're going to love it."

AMD is also collaborating with Silver Lining Systems (SLS) to integrate SLS' fabric technology in innovative dense server designs featuring the Opteron A1100 Series, targeted at streaming, Web and storage workloads for cloud and hyperscale datacenters. The SLS Fabric Interconnect incorporates a low-latency, energy-efficient 60Gbps switching fabric and is available as a PCI Express® expansion card or a standalone ASIC for custom server applications.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/1238854.htm