Global supercomputer icon Cray has announced that it has added AMD EPYC processing options to its Cray CS500 product line. These High Performance Computing (HPC) systems are being offered with AMD EPYC 7000 processors, with four dual-socket nodes packed into an industry standard sized 2U chassis. Cray reckon that the AMD powered systems will be a good choice for a wide range of workloads with the added benefits that organisations will not need to rebuild and recompile their x86 applications.
Cray CS500 systems
Each node in the Cray CS500 supports two PCIe Gen3 x 16 slots (200Gb network capability) and provides various HDD/SSD options. The AMD EPYC 7000 processors boast up to 32 cores and support up to eight DDR4 channels per socket. Cray says that the CS500 line will also include a 2U chassis with one node for large memory configurations, visualization, and service node functionality to complement the compute node form factor.
Flexibility is one of the most attractive characteristics of Cray’s CS500 design. The important new choice of being able to specify AMD EPYC processors expands the product line’s market opportunities, noted Hyperion Research senior analyst Steve Conway. “The AMD EPYC processors are expressly designed to provide highly scalable, energy- and cost-efficient performance in large and midrange clusters,” he added.
Cray included a supporting statement from AMD in its press release. “Cray’s leadership in supercomputing is well known and AMD is thrilled to be working with them on the CS500 cluster system,” said Scott Aylor, corporate VP & GM, data centre and embedded solutions, AMD. Aylor went on to observe that “Cray is the first system vendor to offer an optimized programming environment for AMD EPYC processors, which is a distinct advantage. Combining AMD EPYC processors with Cray’s supercomputing expertise opens new opportunities for both companies to grow.”
This is a significant design win for AMD but certainly not its first or most important with its EPYC processors, only launched in June 2017. As noted by ZDNet, Yahoo Japan deployed Dell PowerEdge servers powered by AMD EPYC earlier this month. Late last year Baidu announced the availability of AMD EPYC-powered AI, big data, and cloud computing (ABC) services. Also last December, Microsoft also recently became the first global cloud provider to use EPYC processors in its data centres. In November last year the new EPYC-powered Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) ProLiant DL385 Gen10 server set new world records.
Cray CS500 systems with AMD EPYC processors will be generally available in summer 2018.
