AMD FireStream Powers New GPU Computing Cluster

Over the past months, IT news has mostly centered around the new CPU and GPU that Intel, AMD and NVIDIA rushed to bring out. This means that the developments on the HPC (high-performance computing) didn't get as much attention as they otherwise would have. Fortunately, with the June PC release spree over, supercomputer-related news finally started to emerge again, such as IBM's way of cooling a HPC by means of hot water. Now, AMD has decided to reveal that a new cluster is being created.

This new cluster will essentially be a combination of AMD Opteron 6100-series Magny Cours processors and the recently introduced AMD FireStream GPU computing modules. In fact, it will be the first AMD 'hybrid' cluster.

The conglomerate will be stationed at the Goethe University, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and will be built on SuperMicro “twin” platforms that provide 2 motherboards in a 1U rack server chassis.

The actual construction work will be handled by ClusterVision, a company based in Amsterdam, Netherleands. All in all, the HPC installation will have 1544 12-core AMD Opteron chips and 772 AMD GPUs, one per each 2P node. Physics, chemistry, life sciences and computer research are just a few of the possible uses of this system.

“We are very happy to see this project progressing with AMD technology because it helps us continue our efforts towards bringing GPU and CPU together into a more seamless computing model. Just as we have predicted that in the future, the possibility for GPU and CPU coming together in a single compute model is looking more and more probable, some organizations are not waiting. They see the potential for greater performance and are optimizing their software today to be able to take advantage of this technology convergence that is headed our way,” said John Fruehe, the director of product marketing for server/workstation products at AMD.