IBM, Google, Mellanox, Others Unveil OpenPower Wares at Summit

This year’s OpenPower Summit saw a tripling of the number of OpenPower products on display over last year’s event. Here is a look at some of those systems.

At its OpenPower Summit, the OpenPower Foundation introduced the OpenPower Ready logo that members can affix to their hardware and software products to let customers know that they comply with OpenPower specs.

Big Blue had an array of systems on display at the summit, including the S812LC, a single-socket, 2U (3.5-inch) Linux server with up to 10 processing cores, 1TB of memory, up to 12 disk drives and 115 GB/s of memory bandwidth. It’s aimed at memory- and storage-intensive workloads, like Spark and Hadoop.

The two vendors are developing an OpenPower-based server design code-named “Zaius” that will work with the 48v racks Google has engineered with Facebook and which they hope to contribute to the Facebook-led Open Compute Project. The system will be powered by IBM’s upcoming Power9 chip (due out next year) and include OpenCAPI and Nvidia’s NVLink connectivity, DDR4 memory and the CAPI acceleration technology.

IBM and original design manufacturer Wistron are building a next-generation Power8 system for HPC environments that will use Nvidia’s new Tesla P100 GPU accelerators. The first systems will be available late this year.

Penguin Computing came to the summit with several OpenPower systems, including the Magna 2002, which includes two Power8 chips and Nvidia’s Tesla GPU accelerators. It supports Tesla K80 GPUs for technical computing and Tesla M40 for machine learning applications.

The Chinese system maker’s Allure family includes single- or dual-socket 4U (7-inch) servers that support Power8 chips, DDR3 memory and 12 PCIe Gen 3 ports.

Tyan’s TN71-BP012, left, runs on Power8 chips and comes with high memory capacity and high-end compute performance, and enables customers to create their own customized IT infrastructure. The GT75-BP012 is a 1U (1.75-inch) single-socket Power8 server aimed at HPC and server virtualization.

StackVelocity had a couple of servers at the show, including the Saba, a 2U (3.5-inch) Power8 system that includes the CAPI interconnect technology that targets data analytics workloads and high-performance compute applications.

The Edico Genome Dragen is a processor designed for rapid analysis of next-generation sequencing (NGS) data. It’s integrated on a PCIe card and is available in a preconfigured Power8 system for integration into bioinformatics workflows. Dragen can analyze an entire human genome in fewer than 26 minutes, a job that takes traditional servers about 30 hours to complete.

The vendor’s SN2700 Spectrum Ethernet switch, left, is a high-density, 32-port 100GbE platform. Mellanox also unveiled the SB7800 managed EDR InfiniBand switch that officials said enables in-network computing via the Co-Design and “SHArP” technology. It delivers up to 7TB/s of non-blocking bandwidth with 90-nanosecond port-to-port latency.

The company came to the OpenPower Summit armed with several new network switches, including the VDX6740 Ethernet Fabric switch (lower left), with 10/40 GbE ports and Brocade’s VCS Fabric technology; the 6510 Gen 5 Fibre Channel switch (lower right), with 48 ports and 16Gb/s speed for high-density server virtualization, cloud architectures and flash-based storage environments; and the G620 Gen 6 Fibre Channel Fabric switch (at 32Gb/s), a 1U, 64-port switch that is highly scalable.

QLogic came to the summit with several adapter cards, including the QLE2564L, a low-profile, quad-port 8Gb Fibre Channel adapter that offers power and virtualization optimization and compatibility with previous adapters, including 4Gb and 2Gb offerings.

The company showed off several of its own adapter cards, including the Adaptec Series 7 SAS/SATA RAID adapter, which officials called the lowest-power 24-port RAID adapter for 6Gb/s systems.