Dell Storage for HPC

At SC14, Dell, Inc. continued to push the boundaries of HPC by unveiling the PowerEdge C4130, the next addition in the PowerEdge server portfolio in GPU/accelerator density to speed the most demanding workloads. 

Dell also introduced Storage for HPC with Intel Enterprise Edition for Lustre software , a solution engineered and validated with Intel Corp. to bring an HPC file system to enterprise and research organizations of all types. These HPC achievements deliver on Dell’s promise to enable discovery and innovation through collaboration, and provide market-ready solutions that help solve the HPC challenges customers are facing.

Rapid, seamless and reliable access to information is one of the advantages a company can have over its competitors. Dell is committed to providing robust, scalable and responsive solutions that are innovative and accelerate time-to-discovery. Along with HPC solutions and servers deployed across the globe, the new future-ready HPC solutions introduced help power the discoveries being made by top research organizations and IT, computing, industrial and financial companies.

PowerEdge C4130, an accelerator-optimized server
As an GPU dense and flexible HPC-focused rack server purpose-built to accelerate the demanding HPC workloads, the PowerEdge C4130 is a Xeon E5-2600v3 1U server offering up to four GPUs/accelerators (based on Dell internal analysis performed November 2014). It has up to 33% better GPU/accelerator density than its closest competitors (based on Dell internal analysis of number of GPUs per 1U of rack space performed against SuperMicro SYS 1028GR-TR and HP SL250s Gen8 SL6500 in November 2014) and 400% more PCIe GPU/accelerators per processor per rack U than a comparable HP system (based on Dell internal analysis performed November 2014). The PowerEdge C4130 can achieve over 7.2 teraflops on a single 1U server and has a performance/watt ratio of up to 4.17 Gigaflops per watt (based on Dell Labs testing performed November 2014 using the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark test). This allows customers to further optimize application performance and productivity while unshackling the constraints of traditional datacenter space and energy use.

Incorporating technology from NVIDIA Corp. and Intel, the PowerEdge C4130 is available in five configurations that address the flexibility necessary for varying HPC workload characteristics. This supercomputing agility allows for scientific and medical research labs, financial firms, industrial companies and organizations with analytical or data-intensive computing needs to deliver faster results and adapt to changing business needs.

The PowerEdge C4130 adds up to two Xeon E5-2600v3 processors, 16 DIMMs of DDR4 memory and up to two 1.8-inch SATA SSD boot drives in just 1U of rack space. With up to four 300W Xeon Phi coprocessors or NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators, including the new Tesla K80 dual-GPU accelerator, the PowerEdge C4130 enables analysis and execution of data on complex and intensive computing workloads.

Storage for HPC with Intel Enterprise Edition (EE) for Lustre Software
HPC workloads require storage infrastructure that scales endlessly and delivers unmatched I/O levels, while increasing the overall utilization rate. Storage for HPC with the Intel EE for Lustre software combines Dell’s hardware with Intel’s open-source Lustre software to bring the benefits of an HPC file system to enterprise organizations of all types. The solution delivers a higher level of computing power and throughput, making available information and insights derived from big data and compute-intensive applications – including advanced modeling, simulation, and data analysis – to a wider audience of enterprise users.

The solution is built on PowerEdge servers and Storage MD3460 arrays and MD3060e dense enclosures to provide redundant servers and failover-enabled storage. It is a solution with validation and support for Intel EE for Lustre software, providing customers with simplified installation, configuration, monitoring and overall management features backed by Dell and Intel. 

With Storage for HPC with Intel EE for Lustre software, customers can:

• Start small and scale to tens of thousands of clients and petabytes of data to support business workloads.
• Run larger and more complex applications easier with faster throughput and capacity.
• Build future-ready storage for the demanding workloads with a supported, commercial-ready Lustre file system, backed by Dell and Intel.
• Reduce time spent on design, validation, testing and tuning with a solution that has been tested and validated by Dell.

“Dell is dedicated to enhancing all aspects of HPC and addressing our customers’ needs through premier tech,ogy, services, expert guidance and collaboration,” said Jimmy Pike, VP, senior fellow and chief architect, Dell. “The advancements and innovations in the new HPC solutions introduced today will help power the revolutionary discoveries being made by the top research organizations and accelerate product and service development for leading IT companies.”

“The PowerEdge C4130 has really impressive features for HPC environments, including industry-leading accelerator density with up to four 300W PCIe accelerators per 1U,”said Darren Kozlek, Western HemisphereInformation systems manager, TGS. “But I’m even more impressed with how Dell listened to our feedback and deliberately designed a flexible solution that met our technical computing needs. With the PowerEdge C4130, Dell delivered the density and flexibility we need to tackle our most demanding workloads.”

“Organizations around the world in academia and industry are using HPC to push the boundaries of insight, innovation and product development,” said Charles Wuischpard, VP, data center group and GM of workstations and HPC, Intel. “To better compete in a worldwide market, they need ever-higher performance and scalability to solve today’s increasingly complex challenges. Dell’s new HPC solutions using Intel Xeon processors, Xeon Phi coprocessors and enhanced Intel EE for Lustre software epitomize a commitment to helping customers solve their greatest challenges at every scale.”

“A majority of HPC users are moving to higher GPU density configurations to drive discovery and innovation in seismic processing, signal and image processing, computational chemistry, and machine learning,” said Sumit Gupta, GM of Tesla accelerated computing, NVIDIA. “The Dell PowerEdge C4130 is a unique platform that packs four Tesla K40 or the new Tesla K80 dual-GPU accelerators into a compact 1U form factor, with a very flexible architecture that maximizes application performance with NVIDIA GPUDirect.”