Big Red 200 supercomputer: 86,016 cores, 172,032 threads + Ampere GPUs

Indiana University is currently building out its exciting new Big Red 200 supercomputer, which will have an insane amount of computing power, as well as some delicious new technology including AMD EPYC CPUs and unreleased NVIDIA Ampere GPUs. Check out the video of the initial first phase build:

The university is celebrating its 200th year, which is where the name 'Big Red 200' comes from (red is also Indiana University's color scheme). Inside, Big Red 200 packs 672 dual-socket nodes that will be powered by AMD's kick ass EPYC 7742 'Rome' CPUs that each pack 64 cores and 128 threads for a total of yes-it-can-run-crysis 86,016 cores and 172,032 threads.

The first phase sees the CPUs being deployed thanks to AMD EPYC 7742 chips, but the university had the stars aligned as they were offered to use NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere GPUs. At first, Indiana University was going to use NVIDIA's current-gen Tesla V100 GPUs that are based on the Volta GPU architecture -- but Brad Wheeler, the vice president for information technology and chief information officer at IU explained they "decided to take the machine in two phases" when NVIDIA offered something special "at the last minute".

And that something special, should be their next-gen Ampere GPUs which NVIDIA will unveil at its GPU Technology Conference in March.

Big Red 200 supercomputer specs:

• AMD EPYC 7742 'Rome' CPUs (64 cores / 128 threads)
• Total CPU cores: 86,016 cores / 172,032 threads
• NVIDIA next-gen Ampere GPUs

Last updated: Feb 2, 2020 at 06:11 am CST