(iTers News) – Intel Corporation today took the wraps off several new and enhanced chip technologies to consolidate its leadership in high-performance computing, or HPC.
Among them are future generation Intel Xeon Phi processor code-named as Knights Hill, and new architectural and performance details for Intel Omni-Path Architecture, a new high-speed interconnect technology optimized for HPC deployments.
Intel also announced new software releases and collaborative efforts designed to make it easier for the HPC community to extract the full performance potential from current and future Intel industry-standard hardware.
Combined, these new HPC building blocks and industry collaborations will help to tackle dual challenges of extreme scalability and mainstream use of HPC while providing the foundation for a cost-effective path to exascale computing.
Codenamed as Knights Hill, the future third-generation Intel Xeon Phi product family will be will be built using Intel's 10nm process technology, coming integrated with Intel Omni-Path Fabric technology.
Knights Hill will follow the upcoming Knights Landing product, with first commercial systems based on Knights Landing expected to begin shipping next year. Industry’s embrace of Intel Xeon Phi processors continues to expand with more than 50 providers expected to offer systems built using the new processor version of Knights Landing, with many more systems using the coprocessor PCIe card version of the product.
Codename Knights Hill
To date, committed customer deals using the Knights Landing processor represent over 100 PFLOPS of system compute.
Among the Knights Landing processor-based systems are Trinity supercomputer, a joint effort between Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, and the Cori supercomputer, announced by The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center, just to name two.
Additionally, DownUnder GeoSolutions a geosciences company, recently announced the largest commercial deployment of current-generation Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors, and the National Supercomputing Center IT4Innovations announced a new supercomputer that will become the largest Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor-based cluster in Europe.
Intel disclosed that the Intel Omni-Path Architecture is expected to offer 100 Gbps line speed and up to 56% lower switch fabric latency in medium-to-large clusters than InfiniBand alternatives.
The Intel Omni-Path Architecture will use a 48 port switch chip to deliver greater port density and system scaling compared to the current 36 port InfiniBand alternatives. Providing up to 33% more nodes per switch chip is expected to reduce the number of switches required, simplifying system design and reducing infrastructure costs at every scale.
Expected system scaling benefits are manifolds including up to 1.3x greater port density than InfiniBand – enabling smaller clusters to maximize single switch investments. It also just uses up to 50% fewer switches than a comparable InfiniBand-based cluster of medium- to large-size. Another benefit is up to 2.3x higher scaling in a two-tier fabric configuration using the same number of switches as an InfiniBand-based cluster – allowing for more cost-effective scaling for very large cluster-based systems.
Intel als launched the Intel Fabric Builders Program to create an ecosystem working together to enable solutions based on the Intel Omni-Path Architecture.
Intel system sits on 86% of supercomputers
An expansion of the Intel Parallel Computing Centers was also announced, bringing the total to more than 40 centers in 13 countries working to modernize more than 70 of HPC's most popular community codes. Intel expanded its Lustre software capabilities with the release of Intel® Enterprise Edition for Lustre software v2.2 andIntel® Foundation Edition for Lustre software.
New appliances using the enhanced Intel Solutions for Lustre software are currently being offered from Dell, DataDirect Networks and Dot Hill.
Intel-based systems account for 86% of all supercomputers and 97% of all new additions, according to the 44th edition of the TOP500 list announced today. In the two years since the introduction of the first-generation Intel Xeon Phi product family, these many-core, coprocessor-based systems represent 17% of the aggregated performance of all TOP500 supercomputers.
“ Intel is excited about the strong market momentum and customer investment in the development of HPC systems based on current and future Intel Xeon Phi processors and high-speed fabric technology," said Charles Wuischpard, vice president, Data Center Group, and general manager of Workstations and HPC at Intel. "The integration of these fundamental HPC building blocks, combined with an open standards-based programming model, will maximize HPC system performance, broaden accessibility and use, and serve as the on-ramp to exascale."