In this podcast from ISC 2017 in Frankfurt, the Radio Free HPC team sits down with Scott Misage from Intel to learn why Intel Omni-Path has gained momentum on the TOP500. “Intel Omni-Path Architecture delivers the performance for tomorrow’s high performance computing workloads and the ability to scale to tens of thousands of nodes—and eventually more—at a price competitive with today’s fabrics. The Intel OPA 100 Series product line is an end-to-end solution of PCIe* adapters, silicon, switches, cables, and management software. As the successor to Intel® True Scale Fabric, this optimized HPC fabric is built upon a combination of enhanced IP and Intel technology.”
High Performance System Interconnect Technology
Today, high performance interconnects can be divided into three categories: Ethernet, InfiniBand, and vendor specific interconnects. Ethernet is established as the dominant low level interconnect standard for mainstream commercial computing requirements. InfiniBand originated in 1999 to specifically address workload requirements that were not adequately addressed by Ethernet, and vendor specific technologies frequently have a time to market (and therefore performance) advantage over standardized offerings.
Video: Interconnects and Architectural Impacts
In this video from the 2014 Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing, Torsten Hoefler presents: Interconnects and Architectural Impacts.