Indiana University shows us on video Big Red, the server with 1.344 AMD EPYC processors

The implementation of AMD EPYC processors in high-performance systems such as servers is increasing. Their excellent performance-to-price ratio is making them a much more attractive solution than Intel Xeon processors. It has just been announced that Indiana University has the Big Red 200 operational. This is the first Cray "Shasta" system to go live worldwide.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects is that this system, in addition to using AMD EPYC processors, uses NVIDIA Ampere graphics. Initially, it was going to be equipped with NVIDIA V100 graphics of Tesla architecture that offered up to 5.9PFLOPs of power. Finally the project has been delayed a bit to implement next generation graphics that exceed 8PFLOPs of power.

Big Red 200 video from Indiana University

This system has no less than 672 nodes and in each of them we find a Dual Socket motherboard. We have in total a whopping 1.344 AMD EPYC 7742 processors with 64 cores and 128 threads each. If we do the math, this system has the brutality of 86.016 Zen2 architecture cores and 172.032 processing threads. Each processor works at a base frequency of 2.25GHz and reaches 3.4GHz in Boost mode.

Something very interesting about this system is that it can be expanded without major problems. Indiana University could increase the number of nodes and therefore the total power of the system. They may do so in a scalable way, to improve the performance and power of this incredible advanced computing system.

It should be noted that the University of Indiana has shown us a video where the final part of the system installation is seen. These systems arrive already assembled in rack cabinets, you simply have to make the last connections and put it to work. Something very interesting is also that liquid cooling is used to improve heat dissipation.

Source: VZ