Colfax Offers Computing Solutions with the Second-Generation NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA/Vector Engine Accelerator
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 2, 2021 -- Colfax International, a leading provider of HPC and AI solutions, today announced the availability of accelerated computing solutions supporting Generation 2 of the NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA/Vector Engine accelerators with Type 20 (VE20) processors. These solutions are implemented in workstation and server form factors. The first available solution in the lineup, the Colfax CX2400a-VE8 2U rackmount server based on an AMD EPYC 7002 processor, supports up to four NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA/Vector Engine accelerators.
NEC's Vector Engine accelerator processor is a massive SIMD architecture balancing the processing power of vector computing cores with the rapid data movement capability of the on-chip high-bandwidth memory (HBM). An eight-core VE20B, for example, delivers an arithmetic performance of 2.45 TFLOP/s in double precision (307 GFLOP/s per core) and a memory bandwidth of 1.53 TB/s (192 GB/s per core) in a 48 GB on-chip high-bandwidth memory (HBM). This is higher than any other SIMD architecture accelerator today in a power envelope of 300 W and a PCIe x16 form-factor, according to the company.
Colfax’s solutions supporting Generation 2 of the NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA/Vector Engine accelerators can provide significant application-level performance gains for traditional (e.g., HPC) and also non-traditional (e.g., high-performance data analytics or sparse data-based AI/ML) applications by using just an existing CPU-targeted or SIMD-aware application source code. With features like auto-vectorization and auto-parallelization or with minimal changes in existing CPU-targeted code, like compiler optimization level or pragmas (compiler directives in the code), users can enjoy full performance of the Vector Engine accelerator processor with no special constructs required. This results in low TCO and good performance per watt efficiency straight away at the application level to the users.
Successful use cases of the NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA/Vector Engine accelerator architecture include, fluid dynamics/analysis (CFD) for aerospace, weather/climate, earth science, seismic imaging/reservoir simulations for O&G industry, monte carlo based finance risk analysis simulations, statistical machine learning, numpy, data frame, recommendation engine, demand/price prediction, and deep learning. A novel application case for computer science accelerated by the NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA/Vector Engine accelerator is the simulation of quantum annealing, a Segway into NEC’s quantum computing initiatives. The mentioned use cases have been demonstrated in a number of online workshops executed by NEC with the help of an educational cloud hosted by Colfax and featuring NEC SX-Aurora TSUBASA/Vector Engine accelerators for students’ use.
“SX-Aurora TSUBASA’s series or Vector Engine accelerator empower users with the unique capability of performing High Performance Computation as well as Distributed Data Analytics, with its high bytes per flops,” said Akio Ikeda, Deputy General Manager, AI Platform Division, NEC Corporation, Japan. “The bundled compilers and libraries enable quick and easy acceleration of existing & new applications using famous or industry standard AI/ML/DL frameworks, in addition to the traditional HPC applications”
Availability
The new Colfax platforms introduced today are immediately available. For more information, please visit https://www.colfax-intl.com/nec/sx-aurora-tsubasa
About Colfax International
Founded in 1987, Colfax International is a leading provider of innovative and expertly engineered High Performance Computing (HPC) and AI solutions serving the needs of Fortune 1000 companies, small and medium sized businesses, startups, educational institutions, R&D laboratories and government agencies. Colfax International is based in Santa Clara, California and is privately held. For more information, please visit www.colfax-intl.com.
Source: Colfax International
