Since 1987 - Covering the Fastest Computers in the World and the People Who Run Them
Since 1987 - Covering the Fastest Computers in the World and the People Who Run Them
SAN DIEGO, March 10, 2022 – GigaIO, creator of next-gen data center rack-scale architecture for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High Performance Computing (HPC) solutions, today announced that production has begun on their CDI testbed in the Lonestar6 system at The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin. Lonestar6 is a 600-node system utilizing Milan-based AMD servers from Dell Technologies and A100 GPUs from NVIDIA, and is the first platform at TACC to incorporate Composable Disaggregated Infrastructure (CDI) in order to benefit from de-centralized server infrastructure.
CDI pools compute and hardware accelerators over a software defined PCIe-based memory fabric, thus providing access to more processing power and storage when needed, and allowing for easy sharing of those resources, thereby increasing their utilization. GigaIO’s composable infrastructure platform pairs this unlimited flexibility with the agility of the cloud, allowing researchers to build completely customized and otherwise impossible servers for their AI and HPC workflows. GigaIO is the only CDI vendor that can transform each server to an entire rack using only PCIe for the absolute lowest latency and highest bandwidth throughout.
GigaIO does this through its universal composable fabric, FabreX, a unique and highly disruptive technology that can transform a rack of servers into a true rack-scale system without proprietary architecture lock-in. Making this happen requires both the ability to disaggregate and compose resources to servers, and the ability to run internode communications on the same network. FabreX orchestrates workloads by configuring any resource on the fly and integrating networking, storage, memory, and specialized accelerators into a single-system cluster fabric. Composing resources with FabreX dramatically lowers OpEx and CapEx costs due to increased resource efficiency, while improving both serviceability and upgradeability.
TACC chose GigaIO as the CDI solution for Lonestar-6 for a number of reasons, chief among them the flexibility to seamlessly choose the best hardware accelerator (or number of accelerators) for each workload; the green savings on cooling, power, and footprint available through increased utilization and minimized server requirements; and most importantly, because of GigaIO’s truly open platform for heterogeneous architectures. GigaIO offers the only composable solution that does not require any proprietary orchestration software. Instead, the company is committed to being an open standards platform, and to working with leading northbound integration software vendors to integrate natively for ease of deployment.
“GigaIO allows us to mix the type and number of accelerators attached to each node, varying them with the particular mix of jobs at any given moment in time,” said Dan Stanzione, Executive Director of TACC. “GigaIO’s ability to efficiently scale resources across all open standards software and hardware is just one of the reasons we selected them and will be continuing to work with them on future cluster enhancements.”
TACC designs and operates some of the world’s most powerful computing resources. The center’s mission is to enable discoveries that advance science and society through the application of advanced computing technologies. Lonestar6 is the latest cluster environment that will be utilized for this work, including computational fluid dynamics, material science, and climate science.
GigaIO is providing Lonestar6’s fabric infrastructure, including switches, cards, cables, JBOGs (Just a Bunch Of GPUs), and composition software. “GigaIO’s composable infrastructure solution democratizes access to expensive specialized resources such as accelerators, which it shares across users and workloads in a way that is simple to implement for IT managers,” said Alan Benjamin, CEO of GigaIO. “FabreX will allow TACC to use any accelerator for any job without limitation, in a future-proof solution that can continue to grow as their processing needs grow.”
Headquartered in Carlsbad, Calif., GigaIO democratizes AI and HPC architectures by delivering the elasticity of the cloud at a fraction of the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). With its universal dynamic infrastructure fabric, FabreX, and its innovative open architecture using industry-standard PCI Express/soon CXL technology, GigaIO breaks the constraints of the server box, liberating resources to shorten time to results. Data centers can scale up or scale out the performance of their systems, enabling their existing investment to flex as workloads and business change over time. For more information, contact info@gigaio.com or visit www.gigaio.com.
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin is one of the leading supercomputing centers in the world. TACC’s mission is to enable discoveries that advance science and society through the application of advanced computing technologies. Tens of thousands of scientists and students use TACC’s supercomputers each year to answer complex questions in every field of science. TACC staff also encourage, educate, and train the next generation of researchers, empowering them to make discoveries that change the world.
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