Mellanox InfiniBand to Connect HPC at Sandia National Laboratory

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. announced that IB will accelerate the world’s top Arm-based supercomputer to be deployed in Sandia National Laboratories in the second half of 2018.

The Astra supercomputer will include nearly 2,600 nodes, and will leverage IB In-Network Computing acceleration engines to provide applications performance and scalability. It is the first system in a series of the Vanguard program of architecture platforms, supporting the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) missions.

“IB smart In-Network Computing acceleration engines will enable the highest performance and productivity for Astra, the first large scale Arm-based supercomputer,” said Gilad Shainer, VP marketing, Mellanox. “IB is the world-leading interconnect technology that supports the full range of compute and storage infrastructures, including X86, Power, Arm, GPUs, FPGAs and more. We are happy to support the Department of Energy’s efforts to explore new supercomputing platforms for their future needs.“

The need to analyze growing amounts of data, to support complex simulations, to overcome performance bottlenecks and to create intelligent data algorithms requires the ability to manage and carry out computational operations on the data as it is being transferred by the data center interconnect. IB solutions incorporate the In-Network Computing technology that performs data algorithms within the network devices, delivering ten times higher performance and enabling the era of data-centric data centers.

“Astra will enable researchers at Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to develop the software environments for future leadership-class platforms, as well as for Astra itself,” said James Laros, Vanguard program lead, Sandia National Laboratory. “The success of Astra will depend on a deep collaboration between Sandia, Westwind, HP Enterprise, Arm, Cavium and Mellanox. We look forward to be able to use the technological capabilities of Astra to maximize the performance and efficiency of our mission codes.“

Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in nuclear deterrence, security, defense, energy technologies and economic competitiveness, with main facilities in Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA.