IBM Cloud Floats Power9 ‘Volta’ Servers

By Tiffany Trader

March 22, 2018

At IBM’s inaugural Think 2018 conference and third US-based OpenPower summit, the tech giant is trumpeting swelling momentum for its OpenPower ecosystem and traction for Power9, including Google’s disclosure that its custom-built (by Rackspace) Power9 “Zaius” servers are “Google strong,” i.e., market ready. IBM is also welcoming the Power servers, backed by Nvidia V100 GPUs, into its cloud.

IBM Power System AC922

In a blog post on “bringing security and AI to the IBM cloud” Ross Mauri, general manager, IBM Z, and John Considine, general manager, IBM Cloud Infrastructure, revealed the availability of the Power9-based AC922 (“Witherspoon”) systems in the company’s cloud. The new servers with two 16-core Power9 chips and four Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs are said to provide a 4x speedup for deep learning training compared to competitive Intel hardware, according to internal testing by IBM*.

While hailing the advantages of its Power servers’ unique support for the CPU-to-GPU NVLink interface (which offers a 5-10x speedup in communications over PCIe gen3), IBM has been slow to bring HPC-class Power architectures into its own cloud, even ceding first-mover bragging rights to partner and HPC cloud vendor Nimbix, which deployed the Power8 Minsky technology in 2016 (and was the first public cloud provider to do so). [Nimbix is also announcing Power9 on its cloud, which we cover in-depth here.]

IBM was an early adopter of Nvidia’s high-end Pascal and Volta GPU gear, but used the PCIe variants within x86 Intel servers. Why IBM held out on putting Power in its cloud is a bit of a head-scratcher since the company believes it has the superior technology (with Power) and strategy (with OpenPower) to put a dent in Intel’s game. If IBM’s cloud customers weren’t ready, that’s understandable, but for the sake of optics alone, it’s surprising IBM didn’t make the move earlier.

At any rate, now there is some critical mass happening for Power/OpenPower (covered here) and IBM Cloud is moving to embrace it. PowerAI will also be brought into the IBM Cloud, with planned availability for next quarter. The suite of artificial intelligence tools supporting popular frameworks like TensorFlow, Torch and Caffe was developed and optimized for IBM’s accelerated Power servers, so it’s only natural that it would be included.

In addition, IBM announced it is integrating SAP HANA on Power into the IBM Cloud as an SAP-certified managed application service. “Through this integrated approach of hardware and software, IBM is the first to offer this level of cloud support for massive workloads of up to 24 TB by using IBM Power Systems and IBM Storage,” said Mauir and Considine.

In a press briefing at IBM Think, Senior Vice President IBM Cognitive Systems Bob Picciano said the traditional approach to high-performance computing is undergoing disruption from the fast growing GPU-accelerated approach. “We’re democratizing hardware-software integration,” Picciano told HPCwire. He cited Snap ML on Power9 as an example, referring to the new library developed by the IBM Zurich Research that “trains models faster than you can snap your fingers.”

Using an online advertising (click stream) dataset released by Criteo Labs with over 4 billion training examples, the Zurich team trained a logistic regression classifier across four IBM Power System AC922 servers, each with four Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs. Training was accomplished in just 91.5 seconds, a 46x speedup over the previous best result reported by Google, which used TensorFlow on Google Cloud Platform to train the same model in 70 minutes (more info here). “We’re seeing that pattern repeatedly with machine learning and deep learning once you move into Power9 on the GPU stack,” said Picciano.

While IBM rolls out Power9/OpenPower in the enterprise, it has already made a splash in leadership supercomputing with the DOE Power9-based CORAL machines Summit and Sierra. On track for acceptance this summer, the systems, which cost $325 million to develop and manufacture, will be the largest in the United States; and Summit, with an expected 200-petaflops of peak performance, is in the running to be the world’s fastest supercomputer, as measured by the long-running Linpack benchmark.

* Results are based on IBM Internal Measurements running the CUDA H2D Bandwidth Test Hardware: Power AC922; 32 cores (2 x 16c chips), POWER9 with NVLink 2.0; 2.25 GHz, 1024 GB memory, 4xTesla V100 GPU; Ubuntu 16.04. S822LC for HPC; 20 cores (2 x 10c chips), POWER8 with NVLink; 2.86 GHz, 512 GB memory, Tesla P100 GPU  Competitive HW: 2x Xeon E5-2640 v4; 20 cores (2 x 10c chips) / 40 threads; Intel Xeon E5-2640 v4; 2.4 GHz; 1024 GB memory, 4xTesla V100 GPU, Ubuntu 16.04

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire