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For Ansys engineering simulations, check out Supermicro's AMD-powered SuperBlade

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For Ansys engineering simulations, check out Supermicro's AMD-powered SuperBlade

The Supermicro SuperBlade powered by AMD EPYC processors provides exceptional memory bandwidth, floating-point performance, scalability and density for technical computing workloads. They're valuable to your customers who use Ansys software to create complex simulations that help solve real-world problems. 
 
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If you have engineering customers, take note. Supermicro and AMD have partnered with Ansys Inc. to create an advanced HPC platform for engineering simulation software.

The Supermicro SuperBlade, powered by AMD EPYC processors, provides exceptional memory bandwidth, floating-point performance, scalability and density for technical computing workloads.

This makes the Supermicro system especially valuable to your customers who use Ansys software to create complex simulations that help solve real-world problems.

The power of simulation

As you may know, engineers design the objects that make up our daily lives—everything from iPhones to airplane wings. Simulation software from Ansys enables them to do it faster, more efficiently and less expensively, resulting in highly optimized products.

Product development requires careful consideration of physics and material properties. Improperly simulating the impact of natural physics on a theoretical structure could have dramatic, even life-threatening consequences.

How bad could it get? Picture the wheels coming off a new car on the highway.

That’s why it’s so important for engineers to have access to the best simulation software operating on the best-designed hardware.

And that’s what makes the partnership of Supermicro, AMD and Ansys so valuable.The result of this partnership is a software/hardware platform that can run complex structural simulations without sacrificing either quality or efficiency.

Wanted: right tool for the job

Product simulations can lead to vital developments, whether artificial heart valves that save lives or green architectures that battle climate change.

Yet complex simulation software is extremely resource-intensive. Running a simulation on under-equipped hardware can be a frustrating and costly exercise in futility.

Even with modern, well-equipped systems, users of simulation software can encounter a myriad of roadblocks. These are often due to inadequate processor frequency and core density, insufficient memory capacity and bandwidth, and poorly optimized I/O.

Best-of-breed simulation software like Ansys Fluent, Mechanical, CFX, and LS-DYNA demands a cutting-edge turnkey hardware solution that can keep up, no matter what.

That’s one super blade

In the case of Supermicro’s SuperBlade, that solution leverages some of the world’s most advanced computing tech to ensure stability and efficiency.

The SuperBlade’s 8U enclosure can be equipped with up to 20 compute blades. Each blade may contain up to 2TB of DDR4 memory, two hot-swap drives, AMD Instinct accelerators and 3rd gen AMD EPYC 7003 processors.

The AMD processors include up to 64 cores and 768 MB of L3 cache. All told, the SuperBlade enclosure can contain a total of 1,280 CPU cores.

Optimized I/O comes in the form of 1G, 10G, 25G or 100G Ethernet or 200G InfiniBand. And each node can house up to 2 additional low-profile PCIe 4.0 x16 expansion cards.

The modular design of SuperBlade enables Ansys users to run simultaneous jobs on multiple nodes in parallel. The system is so flexible, users can assign any number of jobs to any set of nodes.

As an added benefit, different blades can be used in the same chassis. This allows workloads to be assigned to wherever the maximum performance can be achieved.

For instance, a user could launch a four-node parallel job on four nodes and simultaneously two 8-node parallel jobs on the remaining 16 nodes. Alternatively, an engineer could run five 4-node parallel jobs on 20 nodes or ten 2-node parallel jobs on 20 nodes.

The bottom line

Modern business leaders must act as both engineers and accountants. With a foot planted firmly on either side, they balance the limitless possibilities of design with the limited cash flow at their discretion.

The Supermicro SuperBlade helps make that job a little easier. Supermicro, AMD and Ansys have devised a way to give your engineering customers the tools they need, yet still optimize data-center footprint, power requirements and cooling systems.

The result is a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and with absolutely no compromise in quality.

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Get a better Google on-prem cloud with Supermicro SuperBlade

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Get a better Google on-prem cloud with Supermicro SuperBlade

Supermicro SuperBlade servers powered by AMD EPYC processors are ideal for managing cloud-native workloads--and for connecting to the wealth of services the Google Cloud Platform provides.

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Everyone’s moved to the public cloud, right? No, not quite.

Sure, many organizations have moved to the cloud for application development and a place to run applications. And why not, since the benefits can include faster time to market, greater efficiencies, increased scalability and lower costs.

Yet many organizations have too many IT systems and processes to “lift and shift” them to the cloud all at once. Instead, their journey to the cloud will likely take months or even years.

In the meantime, some are adopting on-premises clouds. This approach gives them dedicated, bare metal servers, or servers that can be set up with cloud services and capabilities.

One popular approach to an on-premises cloud is Google GDC Virtual. Formerly known as Google Anthos on-prem and bare metal, this solution extends Google’s cloud capabilities and services to an organization’s on-prem data center.

Your customers can use Google GDC Virtual to run new, modernized applications, bring in AI and machine learning workloads, and modernize on-premises applications.

All this should be especially interesting to your customers if they already use the Google Distributed Cloud (GDC). This portfolio of products now includes GDC Virtual, extending Google’s cloud infrastructure and services to the edge and corporate data centers.

More help is here now from Supermicro SuperBlade servers powered by AMD EPYC processors. They’re ideal for managing cloud-native workloads. And for connecting to the wealth of services the Google Cloud Platform provides.

These servers include a bare metal option that delivers many cloud benefits to self-managed Supermicro SuperBlade servers. This offers your customers Bare Metal as a Service (BMaaS) for workloads that include AI inferencing, visual computing, big data and high-performance computing (HPC).

Why on-prem cloud?

With the public cloud such a popular, common solution, why might your customers prefer to run an on-prem cloud? The reasons include:

  • Data security, compliance and sovereignty requirements. For example, privacy regulations may prohibit your customer from running an application in the public cloud.
  • Monolithic application design. Some legacy application architectures don’t align with cloud pricing models.
  • Demand for networking with very low latency. Highly transactional systems, such as those used by banks, benefit from being physically close to their users, data and next-hop processors in the application flow.
  • Protect legacy investments: Your customer may have already spent a small fortune on on-prem servers, networking gear and storage devices. For them, shifting from CapEx to OpEx—normally one of the big benefits of moving to the cloud—may not be an option.

Using GDC Virtual, your customers can deploy both traditional and cloud-native apps. A single GDC Virtual cluster can support deployments across multiple cloud platforms, including not only Google Cloud, but also AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Super benes

If all this sounds like a good option for your customers, you should also consider Supermicro servers. They’re ideal for managing cloud-native workloads when used as control panel nodes and worker nodes to create a GDC Virtual hybrid cluster.

Here are some of the main benefits your customers can enjoy by using Supermicro SuperBlade servers powered by AMD EPYC processors:

  • Hardware-agnostic: Your customers can leverage existing on-prem SuperBlade servers to drive data-center efficiency.
  • No hypervisor layer overhead: Deploying GDC Virtual on SuperBlade reduces complexity.
  • Rapid deployment: GDC Virtual enables rapid cloud-native application development and delivery. So both developers and dev-ops teams can benefit from increased productivity.
  • Easy manageability: SuperBlade manageability, coupled with GDC Virtual management, enables increased operational efficiency. A dashboard lets you monitor what’s going on.

Under the hood

Supermicro SuperBlade servers are powered by AMD EPYC 7003 Series processors with AMD 3D V-Cache tech. These CPUs, built around AMD’s “Zen 3” core, contain up to 64 cores per socket.

Supermicro offers three AMD-powered SuperBlade models: SAS, SATA and GPU-accelerated. These can be mixed in a single 8U enclosure, a feature SMC calls “private cloud in a box.” Each server supports up to 40 single-width GPUs or 20 double-width GPUs.

Each server also contains at least one Chassis Management Module (CMM). This lets sys admins remotely manage and monitor server blades, power supplies, cooling fans and networking switches.

Another Supermicro SuperBlade feature is SuperCloud Composer (SCC). It provides a unified dashboard for administering software-defined data centers.

Have customers who want the benefits of the cloud, but without moving to the cloud? Suggest that they adopt an on-premises cloud. And tell them how they can do that by running Google GDC on Supermicro SuperBlade servers powered by AMD EPYC processors.

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Looking to accelerate AI? Start with the right mix of storage

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Looking to accelerate AI? Start with the right mix of storage

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That’s right, storage might be the solution to speeding up your AI systems.

Why? Because today’s AI and HPC workloads demand a delicate storage balance. On the one hand, they need flash storage for high performance. On the other, they also need object storage for data that, though large, is used less frequently.

Supermicro and AMD are here to help with a reference architecture that’s been tested and validated at customer sites.

Called the Scale-Out Storage Reference Architecture, it offers a way to deliver massive amounts of data at high bandwidth and low latency to data-intensive applications. The architecture also defines how to manage data life-cycle concerns, including migration and cold-storage retention.

At a high level, Supermicro’s reference architecture address three important demands for AI and HPC storage:

  • Data lake: It needs to be large enough for all current and historical data.
  • All-flash storage tier: Caches input for application servers and deliver high bandwidth to meet demand.
  • Specialized application servers: Offering support that ranges from AMD EPYC high-core-count CPUs to GPU-dense systems.

Tiers for less tears

At this point, you might be wondering how one storage system can provide both high performance and vast data stores. The answer: Supermicro’s solution offers a storage architecture in 3 tiers:

  • All flash: Stores active data that needs the highest speeds of storage and access. This typically accounts for just 10% to 20% of an organization’s data. For the highest bandwidth networking, clusters are connected with either 400 GbE or 400 Gbps InfiniBand. This tier is supported by the Weka data platform, a distributed parallel file system that connects to the object tier.
  • Object: Long-term, capacity-optimized storage. Essentially, it acts as a cache for the application tier. These systems offer high-density drives with relatively low bandwidth and networking typically in the 100 GbE range. This tier managed by Quantum ActiveScale Object Storage Software, a scalable, always-on, long-term data repository.
  • Application: This is where your data-intensive workloads, such as machine-learning training, reside. This tier uses 400 Gbps InfiniBand networking to access data in the all-flash tier.

What’s more, the entire architecture is modular, meaning you can adjust the capacity of the tiers depending on customer needs. This can also be adjusted to deploy different kinds of products — for example, open-source vs. commercial software.

To give you an idea of what’s possible, here’s a real-life example. One of the world’s largest semiconductor makers has deployed the Supermicro reference architecture. Its goal: use AI to automate the detection of chip-wafer defects. Using the reference architecture, the company was able to fill a software installation with 25 PB of data in just 3 weeks, according to Supermicro.

Storage galore

Supermicro offers more than just the reference architecture. The company also offers storage servers powered by the latest AMD EPYC processors. These servers can deliver flash storage that is ideal for active data. And they can handle high-capacity storage on physical discs.

That includes the Supermicro Storage A+ Server ASG-2115S-NE332R. It’s a 2U rackmount device powered by an AMD EPYC 9004 series processor with 3D V-Cache technology.

This storage server has 32 bays for E3.S hot-swap NVM3 drives. (E3.S is a form factor designed to optimize the flash density of SSD drives.) The server’s total storage capacity comes to an impressive 480 TB. It also offers native PCIe 5 performance.

Of course, every organization has unique workloads and requirements. Supermicro can help you here, too. Its engineering team stand ready to help you size, design and implement a storage system optimized to meet your customers’ performance and capacity demands.

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AMD Instinct MI300 Series: Take a deeper dive in this advanced technology

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AMD Instinct MI300 Series: Take a deeper dive in this advanced technology

Take a look at the innovative technology behind the new AMD Instinct MI300 Series accelerators.

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Earlier this month, AMD took the wraps off its highly anticipated AMD Instinct MI300 Series of generative AI accelerators and data-center acceleration processing units (APUs). During the announcement event, AMD president Victor Peng said the new components had been “designed with our most advanced technologies.”

Advanced technologies indeed. With the AMD Instinct MI300 Series, AMD is writing a brand-new chapter in the story of AI-adjacent technology.

Early AI developments relied on the equivalent of a hastily thrown-together stock car constructed of whichever spare parts happened to be available at the time. But those days are over.

Now the future of computing has its very own Formula 1 race car. It’s extraordinarily powerful and fine-tuned to nanometer tolerances.

A new paradigm

At the heart of this new accelerator series is AMD’s CDNA 3 architecture. This third generation employs advanced packaging that tightly couples CPUs and GPUs to bring high-performance processing to AI workloads.

AMD’s new architecture also uses 3D packaging technologies that integrate up to 8 vertically stacked accelerator complex dies (XCDs) and four I/O dies (IODs) that contain system infrastructure. The various systems are linked via AMD Infinity Fabric technology and are connected to 8 stacks of high-bandwidth memory (HBM).

High-bandwidth memory can provide far more bandwidth and yet much lower power consumption compared with the GDDR memory found in standard GPUs. Like many of AMD’s notable innovations, its HBM employs a 3D design.

In this case, the memory modules are stacked vertically to shorten the distance the data needs to travel. This also allows for smaller form factors.

AMD has implemented the HMB using a unified memory architecture. This is an increasingly popular design in which a single array of main-memory modules supports both the CPU and GPU simultaneously, speeding tasks and applications.

Unified memory is more efficient than traditional memory architecture. It offers the advantage of faster speeds along with lower power consumption and ambient temperatures. Also, data need not be copied from one set of memory to another.

Greater than the sum of its parts

What really makes AMD CDNA 3 unique is its chiplet-based architecture. The design employs a single logical processor that contains a dozen chiplets.

Each chiplet, in turn, is fabricated for either compute or memory. To communicate, all the chiplets are connected via the AMD Infinity Fabric network-on-chip.

The primary 5nm XCDs contain the computational elements of the processor along with the lowest levels of the cache hierarchy. Each XCD includes a shared set of global resources, including the scheduler, hardware queues and 4 asynchronous compute engines (ACE).

The 6nm IODs are dedicated to the memory hierarchy. These chiplets carry a newly redesigned AMD Infinity Cache and an HBM3 interface to the on-package memory. The AMD Infinity Cache boosts generational performance and efficiency by increasing cache bandwidth and reducing the number of off-chip memory accesses.

Scaling ever upward

System architects are constantly in the process of designing and building the world’s largest exascale-class supercomputers and AI systems. As such, they are forever reaching for more powerful processors capable of astonishing feats.

The AMD CDNA 3 architecture is an obvious step in the right direction. The new platform takes communication and scaling to the next level.

In particular, the advent of AMD’s 4th Gen Infinity Architecture Fabric offers architects a new level of connectivity that could help produce a supercomputer far more powerful than anything we have access to today.

It’s reasonable to expect that AMD will continue to iterate its new line of accelerators as time passes. AI research is moving at a breakneck pace, and enterprises are hungry for more processing power to fuel their R&D.

What will researchers think of next? We won’t have to wait long to find out.

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Supermicro debuts 3 GPU servers with AMD Instinct MI300 Series APUs

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Supermicro debuts 3 GPU servers with AMD Instinct MI300 Series APUs

The same day that AMD introduced its new AMD Instinct MI300 series accelerators, Supermicro debuted three GPU rackmount servers that use the new AMD accelerated processing units (APUs). One of the three new systems also offers energy-efficient liquid cooling.

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Supermicro didn’t waste any time.

The same day that AMD introduced its new AMD Instinct MI300 series accelerators, Supermicro debuted three GPU rackmount servers that use the new AMD accelerated processing units (APUs). One of the three new systems also offers energy-efficient liquid cooling.

Here’s a quick look, plus links for more technical details:

Supermicro 8-GPU server with AMD Instinct MI300X: AS -8125GS-TNMR2

This big 8U rackmount system is powered by a pair of AMD EPYC 9004 Series CPUs and 8 AMD Instinct MI300X accelerator GPUs. It’s designed for training and inference on massive AI models with a total of 1.5TB of HBM3 memory per server node.

The system also supports 8 high-speed 400G networking cards, which provide direct connectivity for each GPU; 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes; and up to 16 hot-swap NVMe drives.

It’s an air-cooled system with 5 fans up front and 5 more in the rear.

Quad-APU systems with AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators: AS -2145GH-TNMR and AS -4145GH-TNMR

These two rackmount systems are aimed at converged HPC-AI and scientific computing workloads.

They’re available in the user’s choice of liquid or air cooling. The liquid-cooled version comes in a 2U rack format, while the air-cooled version is packaged as a 4U.

Either way, these servers are powered by four AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators, which combine CPUs and GPUs in an APU. That gives each server a total of 96 AMD ‘Zen 4’ cores, 912 compute units, and 512GB of HBM3 memory. Also, PCIe 5.0 expansion slots allow for high-speed networking, including RDMA to APU memory.

Supermicro says the liquid-cooled 2U system provides a 50%+ cost savings on data-center energy. Another difference: The air-cooled 4U server provides more storage and an extra 8 to 16 PCIe acceleration cards.

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AMD drives AI with Instinct MI300X, Instinct MI300A, ROCm 6

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AMD drives AI with Instinct MI300X, Instinct MI300A, ROCm 6

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AMD this week formally introduced its AMD Instinct MI300X and AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators, two important elements of the company’s new push into AI.

During the company’s two-hour “Advancing AI” event, held live in Silicon Valley and live-streamed on YouTube, CEO Lisa Su asserted that “AI is absolutely the No. 1 priority at AMD.”

She also said that AI is both “the future of computing” and “the most transformative technology of the last 50 years.”

AMD is leading the AI charge with its Instinct MI300 Series accelerators, designed for both cloud and enterprise AI and HPC workloads. These systems offer GPUs, large and fast memory, and 3D packaging using the 4th gen AMD Infinity Architecture.

AMD is also relying heavily on cloud, OEM and software partners that include Meta, Microsoft and Oracle Cloud. Another partner, Supermicro, announced additions to its H13 generation of accelerated servers powered by 4th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct MI300 Series accelerators.

MI300X

The AMD Instinct MI300X is based on the company’s CDNA 3 architecture. It packs 304 GPU cores. It also includes up to 192MB of HBM3 memory with a peak memory bandwidth of 5.3TB/sec. It’s available as 8 GPUs on an OAM baseboard.

The accelerator runs on the latest bus, the PCIe Gen 5, at 128GB/sec.

AI performance has been rated at 20.9 PFLOPS of total theoretical peak FP8 performance, AMD says. And HPC performance has a peak double-precision matrix (FP64) performance of 1.3 PFLOPS.

Compared with competing products, the AMD Instinct MI300X delivers nearly 40% more compute units, 1.5x more memory capacity, and 1.7x more peak theoretical memory bandwidth, AMD says.

AMD is also offering a full system it calls the AMD Instinct Platform. This packs 8 MI300X accelerators to offer up to 1.5TB of HBM3 memory capacity. And because it’s built on the industry-standard OCP design, the AMD Instinct Platform can be easily dropped into an existing servers.

The AMD Instinct MI300X is shipping now. So is a new Supermicro 8-GPU server with this new AMD accelerator.

MI300A

AMD describes its new Instinct MI300A as the world’s first data-center accelerated processing unit (APU) for HPC and AI. It combines 228 cores of AMD CDNA 3 GPU, 224 cores of AMD ‘Zen 4’ CPUs, and 128GB of HBM3 memory with a memory bandwidth of up to 5.3TB/sec.

AMD says the Instinct MI300A APU gives customers an easily programmable GPU platform, high-performing compute, fast AI training, and impressive energy efficiency.

The energy savings are said to come from the APU’s efficiency. As HPC and AI workloads are both data- and resource-intensive, a more efficient system means users can do the same or more work with less hardware.

The AMD Instinct MI300A is also shipping now. So are two new Supermicro servers that feature the APU, one air-cooled, and the other liquid-cooled.

ROCm 6

As part of its push into AI, AMD intends to maintain an open software platform. During CEO Su’s presentation, she said that openness is one of AMD’s three main priorities for AI, along with offering a broad portfolio and working with partners.

Victor Peng, AMD’s president, said the company has set as a goal the creation of a unified AI software stack. As part of that, the company is continuing to enhance ROCm, the company’s software stack for GPU programming. The latest version, ROCm 6, will ship later this month, Peng said.

AMD says ROCm 6 can increase AI acceleration performance by approximately 8x when running on AMD MI300 Series accelerators in Llama 2 text generation compared with previous-generation hardware and software.

ROCm 6 also adds support for several new key features for generative AI. These include FlashAttention, HIPGraph and vLLM.

AMD is also leveraging open-source AI software models, algorithms and frameworks such as Hugging Face, PyTorch and TensorFlow. The goal: simplify the deployment of AMD AI solutions and help customers unlock the true potential of generative AI.

Shipments of ROCm are set to begin later this month.

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How AMD’s hardware-based security can keep your customers safer

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How AMD’s hardware-based security can keep your customers safer

AMD’s Infinity Guard hardware-level security suite is built into the company’s EPYC server processors. It guards against internal and external threats via a multilayered approach designed to prevent various types of attacks. 

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Helping your customers protect themselves against cyber attacks has never been more important.

In a recent survey, nearly 8 in 10 companies worldwide (77%) said they had experienced at least 1 cyber incident in the last 2 years. Virtually all said the attacks were serious.

In North America alone, it was even worse. There, 85% of the survey respondents said they’d been attacked in the last 2 years.

Kaspersky, which conducted the survey, estimates that nearly two-thirds of these attacks were due to human error. So the idea that antivirus software and employee training are enough is clearly wrong.

Why a new approach to security is needed

Fortunately, a relatively new and effective approach is available to you and your customers: hardware-based security.

To be sure, software-based solutions and dedicated firewalls are still effective weapons in the war against cybercrime. But as cybercriminals become increasingly sophisticated, IT managers have no choice but to harden security further by employing security features built in at the silicon level.

That’s because attacks can infect devices below the operating system level. When that happens, the malware gains control of a system before its OS has time to boot up and deploy the security software.

This threat is made even worse by today’s remote workforce. That’s because corporate firewalls can protect workers only when they’re connected to their organizations’ networks.

But remote workers often use networks that are insecure. They may visit a multitude of public websites, download apps, receive email attachments, and even let family and friends use their company-issued devices.

All that might be okay if not for the propensity of viruses and other malware to spread across networks like wildfire. A ransomware attack on a company laptop can, if not isolated, quickly spread to an entire network via a remote connection to a corporate data center.

From there, the ransomware can multiply and infect every other device attached to that same network. That’s how disasters happen.

Infinity Guard to the rescue

Put this all together, and you can see why hardware-level security tech like AMD Infinity Guard has become a must-have for modern data-center architecture.

AMD’s Infinity Guard hardware-level security suite is built into the company’s EPYC series server processors. There, it guards against internal and external threats via a multilayered approach designed to prevent various types of attacks. These include BIOS manipulation, in-memory return-oriented programming (ROP), and virtualized malicious hypervisor attacks.

Diving deep into the technology that underpins AMD Infinity Guard is like swimming to the bottom of the Mariana Trench—fascinating, but not for the faint of heart. A better option: consider Infinity Guard’s 4 primary safeguards:

  • AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV): Provides encryption for every virtual machine on a server. SEV is bolstered by SEV-Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP), which includes memory integrity protection designed to prevent hypervisor-based attacks.
  • AMD Secure Memory Encryption: Guards against cold-boot attacks and other threats to the main memory. It’s a high-performance encryption engine integrated into the memory channel, which also helps accelerate performance.
  • AMD Secure Boot: Protects against bad actors by establishing a “root of trust.” This embedded security checkpoint validates a server’s initial BIOS software to ensure there’s no corruption. Secure Boot also ensures that only authorized firmware authenticated by the AMD Secure Processor can boot up.
  • AMD Shadow Stack: Maintains an ongoing record of return addresses so comparisons can be made to ensure integrity. Shadow Stack helps ward off ROP attacks in which an attacker directs control flow through existing code with malicious results.

‘Data-center security is easy,’ said no one ever

Maintaining a high level of data-center security is a full-time job. IT professionals can spend their entire careers playing digital defense against would-be cyberattackers.

Integrated, hardware-level security like AMD Infinity Guard gives those defenders a powerful tool to prevent ransomware and other attacks. That can help prevent incidents costing companies thousands, or even millions, of dollars.

Shifting your customers to servers with AMD Infinity Guard won’t stop the cyber arms race. But it will give them a hardware-based weapon for protecting themselves.

And Supermicro offers a wide range of servers with AMD EPYC CPUs. These help IT operators to keep their data secure and their systems protected.

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Research Roundup: GenAI use, public-cloud spend, tech debt’s reach, employee cyber violations

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Research Roundup: GenAI use, public-cloud spend, tech debt’s reach, employee cyber violations

Catch up on the latest research from leading IT market watchers and analysts. 

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Generative AI is already used by two-thirds of organizations. Public-cloud spending levels are forecast to rise 20% next year. Technical debt is a challenge for nearly 75% of organizations. And info-security violations by staff are nearly as common as attacks by external hackers.

That’s some of the latest research from leading IT market watchers and analysts. And here’s your Performance Intensive Computing roundup.

GenAI already used by 2/3 of orgs

You already know that Generative AI is hot, but did you also realize that over two-thirds of organizations are already using it?

In a survey of over 2,800 tech professionals, publisher O’Reilly found that fully 67% of respondents say their organizations currently use GenAI. Of this group, about 1 in 3 also say their organizations have been working with AI for less than a year.

Respondents to the survey were users of O’Reilly products worldwide. About a third of respondents (34%) work in the software industry; 14% in financial services; 11% in hardware; and the rest in industries that include telecom, public sector/government, healthcare and education. By region, nearly three-quarters of respondents (74%) are based in either North America or Europe.

Other key findings from the O’Reilly survey (multiple replies were permitted):

  • GenAI’s top use cases: Programming (77%); data analysis (70%); customer-facing applications (65%)
  • GenAI’s top use constraints: Lack of appropriate use cases (53%); legal issues, risk and compliance (38%)
  • GenAI’s top risks: Unexpected outcomes (49%); security vulnerabilities (48%); safety and reliability (46%)

Public-cloud spending to rise 20% next year

Total worldwide spending by end users on the public cloud will rise 20% between this year and next, predicts Gartner. This year, the market watcher adds, user spending on the public cloud will total $563.6 billion. Next year, this spend will rise to $678.8 billion.

“Cloud has become essentially indispensable,” says Gartner analyst Sid Nag.

Gartner predicts that all segments of the public-cloud market will grow in 2024. But it also says 2 segments will grow especially fast next year: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), predicted to grow nearly 27%; and Platform as a Service (PaaS), forecast to grow nearly 22.

What’s driving all this growth? One factor: industry cloud platforms. These combine Software as a Service (SaaS), PaaS and IaaS into product offerings aimed at specific industries.

For example, enterprise software vendor SAP offers industry clouds for banking, manufacturing, HR and more. The company says its life-sciences cloud helped Boston Scientific, a manufacturer of medical devices, reduce inventory and order-management operational workloads by as much as 45%.

Gartner expects that by 2027, industry cloud platforms will be used by more than 70% of enterprises, up from just 15% of enterprises in 2022.

Technical debt: a big challenge

Technical debt—older hardware and software that no longer supports an organization’s strategies—is a bigger problem than you might think.

In a recent survey of 523 IT professionals, conducted for IT trade association CompTIA, nearly three-quarters of respondents (74%) said their organizations find tech debt to be a challenge.

An even higher percentage of respondents (78%) say their work is impeded by “cowboy IT,” shadow IT and other tech moves made without the IT department’s involvement. Not incidentally, these are among the main causes of technical debt, mainly because they are not acquired as part of the organization’s strategic goals.

Fortunately, IT pros are also fighting back. Over two-thirds of respondents (68%) said they’ve made erasing technical debt a moderate or high priority.

Cybersecurity: Staff violations nearly as widespread as hacks

Employee violations of organizations’ information-security policies are nearly as common as attacks by external hackers, finds a new survey by security vendor Kaspersky. 

The survey reached 1,260 IT and security professionals worldwide. It found that 26% of cyber incidents in business occurred due to employees intentionally violating their organizations’ security protocols. By contrast, hacker attacks accounted for 30%—not much higher.

Here’s the breakdown of those policy violations by employees, according to Kaspersky (multiple replies were permitted):

  • 25%: Using weak passwords or failing to change passwords regularly
  • 24%: Visiting unsecured websites
  • 24%: Using unauthorized systems for sharing data
  • 21%: Failing to update system software and applications
  • 21%: Accessing data with an unauthorized device
  • 20%: Sending data (such as email addresses) to personal systems
  • 20%: Intentionally engaging in malicious behavior for personal gain

The issue is far from theoretical. Among respondents to the Kaspersky survey, fully a third (33%) say they’ve suffered 2 or 3 cyber incidents in the last 2 years. And a quarter (25%) say that during the same time period, they’ve been the subject of at least 4 cyberattacks.

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Choose the right AMD EPYC server processor for the job

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Choose the right AMD EPYC server processor for the job

AMD designed its 4th generation EPYC processors to address a variety of workloads, ranging from general-purpose computing to high-performance data center, AI and the edge. Here's how to pick the right one.

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Specifying AMD EPYC processors for your customers is a great first step. The vital second step is choosing the right AMD EPYC processor series for each customer’s unique requirements. It’s not a case of one-size-fits-all.

That’s because AMD designed its 4th generation EPYC processors to address a variety of workloads. These range from general-purpose computing to high-performance data center, AI and the edge.

The AMD server processor portfolio also focuses on energy efficiency, security and what the company calls leadership performance. The latter has allowed AMD to achieve more than 300 world records across industry benchmarks.

Four ways to go

Fortunately, selecting the right AMD 4th gen EPYC CPU isn’t that complicated. The company has organized its server CPUs into just 4 groups.

Each group offers a selection of speeds, core counts, cache sizes, and thermal design power (TDP) best suited to specific tasks including design simulation and cloud computing.

1) AMD EPYC 9004 Series processors: general purpose & enterprise computing

AMD counts the EPYC 9004 Series as its flagship CPU. These server processors are designed to accelerate workloads and speed results for business-critical applications in both enterprise data centers and the cloud.

AMD says the EPYC 9004 series speeds time-to-market by 2.1x and performance-per-system-watt by 2.7x, helping to lower server energy costs.

2) AMD EPYC 9004 Series processors with AMD 3D V-Cache technology: technical computing

Your customers can deploy AMD EPYC 9004 Series processors with AMD 3D V-Cache Technology to meet complex design and simulation challenges. Breakthrough performance comes courtesy of up to 96 ‘Zen 4’ cores and a ground-breaking 1152MB of L3 cache per socket.

These processors are arguably some of the most powerful in the world. They can help your customers accelerate product design even as they help reduce both capital and operational expenditures.

3) AMD EPYC 97x4 Series processors: cloud-native computing

System-level thread density, extensive x86 software compatibility, and a full ecosystem of services make the AMD EPYC 97x4 Series processors ideal for cloud-native environments. Customers focused on performance and energy efficiency can deploy this 4th gen AMD silicon to foster cloud-native work-load growth and infrastructure consolidation.

The 97x4 series includes 3 models with up to 128 cores operating at 2.25GHz. Each has a 256MB L3 cache and a TDP between 320W and 360W.

All 3 processors in this series support a suite of hardware-level security features called AMD Infinity Guard. They also support AMD Infinity Architecture, which lets system builders and cloud architects get maximum power while still ensuring security.

4) AMD EPYC 8004 Series Processors: cloud services, intelligent edge & telco

If your customers are looking for a highly energy-efficient CPU for single-socket platforms, AMD’s EPYC 8004 processors may be the right fit.

AMD engineered this series to power intelligent edge and telco servers like the Supermicro H13 WIO. As such, the processors are designed for space- and power-constrained deployments. Combined with their ability to provide performance in a power envelope as low as 70 watts, the 8004 series is ideally suited to the task.

Your customers can choose from models with 8, 16, 24, 48 or 64 ‘Zen 4c’ cores. The cores are supported by up to 1.152GB of DDR5 memory and up to 128MB of L3 cache.

Right tool for the job

Considering the total cost of ownership (TCO) when deploying a local or remote data center is essential. Choosing a processor well-suited to your customer’s workload can help them save time and money in the long run.

AMD’s 4th generation EPYC processor series includes a wide array of options. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pick the CPU that best suits your customer’s needs.

Good luck!

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Supermicro expands rack capacity so you get servers faster & greener

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Supermicro expands rack capacity so you get servers faster & greener

Supermicro recently announced that it has expanded its capacity and can now provide 5,000 fully integrated, liquid-cooled racks per month. 

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Would you and your customers like to get faster delivery of Supermicro rackmount systems while also helping the environment?

Now you can.

Supermicro recently announced that it has expanded its capacity and can now provide 5,000 fully integrated, liquid-cooled racks per month. That’s because Supermicro now has integration facilities in four countries: the United States, Taiwan, Netherlands and Malaysia.

Supermicro also keeps in stock a certain number of commonly ordered rack configurations, what the company calls “golden SKUs.”

Between those systems and the company’s global locations, Supermicro can now deliver its rackmount systems both faster and over shorter distances. For example, Supermicro could ship a system to a customer in, say, Michigan from its Silicon Valley facility rather than from halfway around the world from Taiwan.

That shorter shipping distance also means less fuel needed and less polluting greenhouse gas produced. That’s an environmental win-win.

Get rolling with a rack

You can rely on Supermicro for data center IT solutions including on-site delivery, deployment, integration and benchmarking to achieve optimal operational efficiency.

Here’s how Supermicro’s rack delivery works in 3 steps:

Step 1: You start with proven reference designs for rapid installation while considering your clients' unique business objectives.

Step 2: You then work collaboratively with Supermicro-qualified experts to design optimized solutions for specific workloads. A prototype is designed and created for small-scale testing.

Step 3: Upon delivery, the racks need only be connected to power, networking and the liquid-cooling infrastructure. In other words, it’s a nearly seamless plug-and-play methodology.

Two areas of special interest for Supermicro are AI and liquid cooling. For AI, Supermicro plans to support AMD’s forthcoming MI300X GPU/CPU system, expected to be formally announced later this year. As for liquid cooling, it’s a technology Supermicro expects will soon be adopted by as many as 1 in 5 data centers worldwide as CPUs and GPUs continue to get hotter.

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