April 9, 2015 - News for the Dell PowerEdge FX2 Platform

Dell introduces today two new offers for the converged infrastructure Dell PowerEdge FX2 :

• The PowerEdge FC430 ultra-dense computing blade, in quarter-width format, is a dual socket Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 server whose RAM capacity can expand up to 256 GB and host a Mellanox InfiniBand mezzanine card, allowing for highly-demanding HPC solutions to benefit from the highest available density on the market at 8 dual-socket servers in just 2U.

• The PowerEdge FD332 storage blade hosts up to 16 SAS or SATA HDD, or 16 SSD in a half-width format. Up to three storage blade are allowed per 2U chassis, thus providing up to 48 drives in 2U for Software Defined Storage or Hadoop solutions that will greatly benefit from the proposed flexibility.

To demonstrate the performances of the new Dell PowerEdge C4130 accelerated-computing solution, the Dell HPC team provides here an exhaustive benchmark campaign for two major Molecular Dynamics (MD) applications : LAMMPS et NAMD with up to 4 NVIDIA Tesla K80 cards. With five topologies available for the Dell PowerEdge C4130, the study compares every option and analyzes the power efficiency delivered.

LAMMPS NAMD

The Dell PowerEdge C4130 platform supports the following accelerators : NVIDIA Tesla K40 and K80, Intel Xeon Phi 3120P, 5110P and 7120P. Several high-end visualization cards from AMD and NVIDIA are being qualified. More applications will be reviewed soon, feel free to contact us for any additional information.

Unveiled HPC purpose-built PowerEdge C4130, the only Intel® Xeon® E5-2600v3 1U server to support four GPU accelerators(1);  provides up to 33 percent more acceleration power than competitors(2)  and can achieve over 7.2 Teraflops on a single server(3)

Dell continues to push the boundaries of high-performance computing (HPC) by unveiling the PowerEdge C4130; the next addition to the Dell PowerEdge server portfolio that is an industry leader in GPU/accelerator density to speed even the most demanding workloads.  The new solution delivers on Dell’s promise to enable discovery and innovation through collaboration, and provide market-ready solutions that help solve the real HPC challenges customers are facing.

Rapid, seamless and reliable access to information is one of the most powerful advantages a company can have over its competitors. As a leader in HPC, Dell is committed to providing robust, scalable and responsive solutions that are innovative and accelerate time-to-discovery. Along with Dell’s HPC solutions and servers deployed across the globe, the new future-ready HPC solution helps power the revolutionary discoveries being made by top research organizations and leading IT, computing, industrial and financial companies.

Dell PowerEdge C4130, an accelerator-optimized server

As an incredibly GPU dense and flexible HPC-focused rack server purpose-built to accelerate the most demanding HPC workloads, the PowerEdge C4130 is the only Intel® Xeon® E5-2600v3 1U server to offer up to four GPUs/accelerators(1). It has up to 33 percent better GPU/accelerator density than its closest competitors(2) and 400 percent more PCIe GPU/accelerators per processor per rack U than a comparable HP system(1). The PowerEdge C4130 can achieve over 7.2 Teraflops on a single 1U server and has a performance/watt ratio of up to 4.17 Gigaflops per watt(3).  This allows customers to further optimise application performance and productivity while unshackling the constraints of traditional data centre space and energy use.

Incorporating innovative technology from NVIDIA and Intel, the PowerEdge C4130 is available in five uniquely-designed configurations that address the flexibility necessary for varying HPC workload characteristics. This supercomputing agility allows for scientific and medical research labs, financial firms, industrial companies and organisations with analytical or data-intensive computing needs to deliver faster results and quickly adapt to changing business needs.

The PowerEdge C4130 adds up to two Intel® Xeon® E5-2600v3 processors, 16 DIMMs of DDR4 memory and up to two 1.8-inch SATA SSD boot drives in just 1U of rack space. With up to four 300W Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessors or NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators, including the new NVIDIA® Tesla® K80 dual-GPU accelerator, the PowerEdge C4130 enables seamless analysis and execution of data on even the most complex and intensive computing workloads.

“Dell is dedicated to enhancing all aspects of high performance computing and addressing our customers’ needs through premier technology, services, expert guidance and collaboration,” said Jimmy Pike, vice president, senior fellow and Chief Architect, Dell. “The advancements and innovations in the new HPC solution will help power the revolutionary discoveries being made by the top research organisations and accelerate product and service development for leading IT companies.”

“Organisations around the world in academia and industry are using HPC to push the boundaries of insight, innovation and product development,” said Charles Wuischpard, vice president, Data Centre Group and General Manager of Workstations and High Performance Computing at Intel. “To better compete in a world-wide market, they need ever-higher performance and scalability to solve today’s increasingly complex challenges.  Dell’s new PowerEdge C4130 using Intel® Xeon® processors and Xeon Phi coprocessors epitomizes a commitment to helping customers solve their greatest challenges at every scale.”  

“A majority of HPC users are moving to higher GPU density configurations to drive discovery and innovation in seismic processing, signal and image processing, computational chemistry, and machine learning,” said Sumit Gupta, general manager of Tesla Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA.

“The Dell PowerEdge C4130 is a unique platform that packs four Tesla K40 or the new Tesla K80 dual-GPU accelerators into a compact 1U form factor, with a very flexible architecture that maximizes application performance with NVIDIA GPUDirect.”

The Dell PowerEdge C4130 will be available worldwide from 2nd December 2014.

• (1) Based on Dell internal analysis performed November 2014.
• (2) Based on Dell internal analysis of number of GPUs per 1U of rack space performed against SuperMicro SYS 1028GR-TR and HP SL250s Gen8 (SL6500) in November 2014.
• (3) Based on Dell Labs testing performed November 2014 using the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark test. Actual performance will vary with configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

Simpler to administer, designed to satisfy the most demanding application workloads, the integration of the latest Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 technology allows them to offer enhanced performances for deployments for workloads such as HPC, Cloud, Big Data , Web and software-defined datacenters.

Many features and innovative options have been developed for the new range of Dell PowerEdge servers:

• the latest advances in storage solutions including SSD acceleration and 1.8’’ HDD,
• an increased computing throughput with up to 18 cores processors,
• the high-speed DDR-4 memory technology and excellent system management capabilities thanks, in particular, to the NFC (Near-Field Communication) technology proposed by the new iDRAC modules.

With the Dell PowerEdge R630, R730xd and R730 rack servers, the PowerEdge M630 blade servers and PowerEdge T630 workstations, Dell combines its complete line of software to create solutions with an uncompromised level of operational efficiency. Flexible configurations are available to allow for unprecedented solutions architecture optimization, whatever your specifications requirements are. For your projects based on Dell's 13th generation servers range, Dell will provide you with all his experience to size, build and plan your project in detail in order to assess a rapid deployment to production time and the highest return on investment.

From the most traditional enterprise applications to the most innovative solutions, the new Dell PowerEdge 13th generation range has been designed to successfully meet the greatest challenges of your organization.