Eurotech HiVe HPC System Adds ARM CPUs

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HiVeThis week at SC15Eurotech announced that their HiVe HPC system is now available with x86 and ARM-64 based processors. The HiVe supercomputer leverages a new original high performance computing system architecture combining extreme density and best-in-class energy efficiency.

The HiVE architecture is based on an innovative highly modular and scalable way of packaging electronics and water cooling, making full use of available space and boasting record-breaking computational density. The HiVe is currently the densest HPC system in the market with a peak performance of more than 1 PFlop/s in one square meter (1.5 PFlop/s per square meter when equipped with NVIDIA Tesla K80).

For the ARM HiVe system development, Eurotech partnered with AppliedMicro, a California-based data center semiconductor company, utilizing the X-Gene processor, the world’s first ARMv8-A Server on a Chip solution. Eurotech has paired the X-Gene processor with NVIDIA Tesla and AMD FirePro GPU accelerators and Intel Xeon coprocessors to efficiently deliver high performance for demanding HPC workloads.

The use of X-Gene processors adds to the already sound HiVe energy efficiency figures, taking them to extreme levels. An HiVe HPC system can perform at top efficiency in terms of sustained flops/watt and it exploits the latest generation of the Eurotech’s patented direct hot liquid cooling, which allows “free cooling” even in the warmest climates on earth and features the best PUE in the industry. This means HiVe brings consistent energy savings at datacenter level.

The collaboration between AppliedMicro and Eurotech has also scored another goal. At the moment, HiVe is the only direct liquid cooled system that combines in a compact server 4 GPGPUs with a 64-bit ARM CPU.

Eurotech has a track record of introducing revolutionary technologies to the HPC market, starting with the first direct hot liquid cooling products worldwide in 2009,” says Fabio Gallo, Eurotech Aurora GM. “The ARM-64 version of our HiVe accelerated supercomputer, which uses AppliedMicro’s X-Gene processors, is no exception. It is the densest and most powerful ARM-64 based supercomputer in the industry.”

The X-Gene processor utilizes a custom ARMv8-A microarchitecture developed to achieve a balance of maximum performance and power-efficiency. The X-Gene solution is a true Server on a Chip architecture providing 8 high performance processor cores coupled with the bandwidth of 4 high speed DDR memory channels and on-chip integration including 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, a management processor, storage interfaces, and PCI-Express Gen 3 I/O expansion.

“We are very excited to see Eurotech coupling their innovative HiVe architecture with AppliedMicro’s X-Gene technology,” said Kumar Sankaran, Associate Vice President of Software and Platforms at AppliedMicro. “The X-Gene architecture is optimized for high density compute platforms and is an ideal vehicle to enable Eurotech platforms to deliver leading-edge performance and cost-effectiveness.”

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