Datacenter Trends
PowerWulf HPC Clusters Launch with Intel Datacenter Blocks
The next-gen high-performance computing clusters are being touted as the an "evolutionary leap" for scalability.
- By John K. Waters
- 01/02/2018
PSSC Labs, a developer of custom high-performance computing (HPC) and Big Data computing solutions, is making its PowerWulf HPC clusters available with Intel's new Xeon Scalable Processors and its Omni-Path HPC Fabric, the company announced recently.
The Xeon Scalable platform is based on a built-from-the-ground-up core, and Intel is billing it as "the foundation for a powerful datacenter platform that creates an evolutionary leap in agility and scalability." It offers up to 28 cores and 56 threads per processor, and boasts a 50 percent increase in memory channels and 20 percent more PCIe lanes compared with the prior generation.
Intel is billing its Omni-Path HPC Fabric offering as "the Next HPC Fabric." The successor to Intel's True Scale Fabric, this optimized HPC fabric is designed to scale tens of thousands of nodes while remaining compatible with InfiniBand APIs.
Lake Forest, Calif.-based PSSC Labs built its PowerWulf clusters with Intel's Data Center Blocks, which are fully validated compute blocks designed to help reduce the complexity of configuring and validating the foundational components of an HPC solution in the datacenter.
The PowerWulf HPC clusters also come with PSSC Labs' CBeST (Complete Beowulf Software Toolkit), the company's own cluster management software package for delivering a preconfigured solution with the necessary hardware, network settings and cluster management software, prior to shipping. CBeST is used to manage, monitor, maintain and upgrade the cluster system.
"With its component structure, CBeST is the most flexible cluster management software package available," the company said.
"Intel's integrated and fully-validated Data Center Blocks enables PSSC Labs to deliver more efficient and turnkey approach and reduce time to market, complexity and the costs of system design, validation and integration," said Alex Lesser, EVP of PSSC Labs, in a statement. "Partnering with Intel allows us to offer our customers the latest hardware options in our line of custom turn-key PowerWulf HPC clusters for a variety of applications across government, academic and commercial environments."
The PowerWulf clusters are available on two operating systems: Red Hat SUSE and CentOS Linux.
About the Author
John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He's been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he's written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS. He can be reached at [email protected].