IT/Datacenter & Super Computing - Page 23

Researchers at the University of Southampton have done something that only us mere mortals could only dream of, build a supercomputer from Raspberry Pi's and Lego.

They've called this Iridis-Pi, which is a very small 64-node cluster made from Raspberry Pi's Debian Wheezy distribution, linked through Ethernet. On their lonesome, Raspberry Pi's are not that powerful, but in a cluster with 1TB worth of storage in SD cards, that's another question.

Rackmounting the cluster was done in a very interesting way, where team lead Simon Cox and his son James put the entire array into two towers of Lego. LEGO!!! There are even instructions so you could do this at home if you've got the money for some Raspberry Pi's and some spare Lego around. The entire system cost less than $4,026 or so to make, which is not too bad at all.

IBM has bragging rights at the moment, with the world's fastest server chip clocking in at an incredible 5.5GHz. IBM's new zEnterprise EC12 mainframe cost the company $1 billion in development, and offers 25% more performance courtesy of their hexacore processors.

IBM's zEnterprise EC12 mainframes are available in multiple configurations, with as many as 120 cores available. All models will include transactional execution support, as well as Enhanced-DAT2, allowing 2GB page frames for more efficient utilization of huge quantities of RAM.

Another jewel of the newly-introduced zEnterprise EC12 mainframe is IBM's cryptographic co-processor, Crypto Express4S. It's quite special as its tamper-proof, providing privacy when handling transactions, and other similarly sensitive data. Crypto Express4S also offers multiple security configurations to support the requirements, and needs of bankers and other organizations handling sensitive data. This includes the information on smart passports and ID cards.

Flash Memory Summit 2012 - Micron was demonstrating their newest Micron-designed PCIe SSD controller at the Flash Memory Summit. This controller has allowed Micron to develop the P320h standard PCIe SSD, but also take a new approach to PCIe SSDs.

There are two approaches, the standard SSD that plugs into the PCIe slot, and then a device that looks strikingly similar to a typical 2.5" SSD.

This standard looking SSD is actually connected via a PCIe connection. Even though the connector resembles a standard connection, it is actually an extension of PCIe which allows for superb latency and much higher throughput speed.

Flash Memory Summit 2012 - NVMe is an emerging specification that looks to take over both SCSI and SATA as the go-to specification for SSDs. This new method of accessing SSDs allows for performance above and beyond the current methods of accessing storage. Many of the performance limitations of flash solutions are actually being held back by archaic storage interfaces, and the advent of the NVMe specification looks to remedy that situation.

Of course the first step to achieving this is working silicon, in the form of controllers that are already integrated into usable solutions. IDT has rose to the challenge, beating many others to actually producing the first operating devices capable of supporting this solution that has been in development for years. This demo unit had a rather large fan over the processor to keep it cool during operation.

This board is the higher capacity version that supports more NAND packages onboard a PCIe gen 3.0 compliant interface. The sheer aggregation of flash dies allows for a more linear scaling in performance from the device, leveraging 32 channels via the 89HF32P08AG3 controller.

Flash Memory Summit 2012 - Since we just happened to be in town at the world's only dedicated NAND flash event, we decided a little extracurricular overclocking was in order. Corsair provided us with some of the hottest new technology on the market today, AX1200i, the world's first all digital power supply, eight Neutron GTX SSDs, the world's first Link_A_Media Devices SSDs and two Dominator Platinum 2400C9 kits. Areca tied it all together with a brand new, unreleased ARC-1882ix-12 with 4GB of DDR3 cache, a true PCIe 3.0 RAID controller.

We managed to smash the record with a result of 55,340 PCMarks. PCMark Vantage is the premier storage benchmarking suite used worldwide, so to break the overall record isn't easy.

As per usual when we set out for taking a record there is a large amount of Liquid Nitrogen used, bringing us down to -130C on the processor to allow for much higher CPU clocks. Quite a bit of preparation and test runs went into this adventure, with Mike Guava and Charles Wirth, AKA Fugger, from XtremeSystems taking point.

FMS 2012 - SMART Storage has been making waves lately in the enterprise SSD space with an entire line of drives for every type of application.

The focus at the Flash Memory Summit was on the Optimus SSD, which sports a dual SAS connection. This allows this SSD to pull off 1GB/s in sequential read speed and 500 MB/s in write speed.

A closer look reveals that the SSD has two SAS connectors connecting into the device, which allows the high power of the SSD to be unleashed. This also allows for several types of enterprise features, such as failover and multipath data access.

FMS 2012 - HGST today demonstrated their new 12Gb/s SAS Enterprise SSDs. These are the first 12Gb/s SSDs in existence, and they are in an unbranded case.

We can see the performance improvement between a current tech 6Gb/s SSD, which is pulling down 547 MB/s in sequential read, and the 12Gb/s SSD that is providing 995 MB/s from one device! Nearly 1GB/s of sequential speed from a single SSD is simply unheard of with today's interface.

The 6Gb/s, in the foreground, and the 12Gb/s SSD are both of similar size, so the performance increase does not involve a larger device.

One of the neatest aspects of attending industry shows like the Flash Memory Summit is that you never know just what the guy sitting next to you has in his pocket. While attending the seminar on NVMe (an emerging specification and subject of another article soon), we managed to strike up a conversation with a fellow attendee. After mentioning that we had previously done a write up of the Intel 910, which he had also happened to have read, he produced something that he claims to be much more interesting.

Considering that this device is unreleased and holds 2.2 TB of raw NAND flash, he most certainly did open our eyes. This is the Virident FlashMAX II, which is a PCIe SSD aimed for the datacenter. With read speeds of up to 2.7 GB/s and write speeds up to 1.6GB/s, these cards deliver monstrous performance. 1.5 Million IOPS of random read is simply astounding, especially considering the attention given to solid, sustainable performance over a long period of time. With MLC NAND, and a hefty bit of overprovisioning, Virident is looking to bring sustainable performance to their customers.

Unfortunately their primary competitors can suffer high levels of performance degradation after extended use. The Virident FlashMAX II is designed specifically to avoid these pitfalls, operating at full speed even after years of continuous load.

The flick has been switched for the most powerful GPU supercomputer, Emerald, at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire, U.K., the two systems working together "will give businesses and academics unprecedented access to their super-fast processing capability".

The insane amounts of power will allow researchers to run simulations that range from health care to astrophysics. The supercomputer combo will be used to look at the Tamiflu vaccine's effect on swine flu, Square Kilometre Array project data, climate change modelling and 3G/4G communications modelling. The official launch of the e-Infrastructure South Consortium took place at the same time, coinciding with Emerald's unveiling.

This is a consortium of four U.K. universities, Bristol, Oxford, University College London and Southampton, who will collaborate with RAL and work with the supercomputers. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded the supercomputers with a £3.7 million grant. The EPSRC press release has a tonne of details and specifications for the supercomputers, and also states:

SMART Storage Systems has announced their newest entry into their Enterprise SSD family, the Optimus Ultra+. The 'Ultra' part of the name comes from two central facets of performance, speed and endurance. This SAS 6/Gb/s SSD sports some impressive numbers, with 100,000 random read IOPS and 60,000 random write IOPS. The SSD also supports dual-port SAS, which allows the throughput to climb to an unheard of 1GB/s.

The real story here is the endurance however. The Optimus Ultra+ is rated for 50 Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD) for five years. This means that the capacity of the drive can be written and deleted 50 times every day for five years.

The Optimus family of SSDs all centers around one philosophy; providing SLC-like endurance with MLC pricing. The attraction of MLC over SLC is simple; SLC commands ridiculously high prices while MLC is becoming garden-variety. Even in the consumer market we are now seeing MLC drop below the dollar per GB threshold. This low price level will always be welcome in any market, but creating Enterprise-class MLC is not an easy task.