THEMIS Computer (France): The 6U Supercomputer

by Philippe Weber (European Sales Manager) and Roger Stein (Product Marketing Manager)

Monday 6 Mar 2006, 14:00 → 17:30 Europe/Zurich

40-R-C-10 (CERN)

Themis computer, a leading provider of high performance Single-Board Computers and systems solutions, is integrating leading edge technologies to bring supercomputer performance to VME crates and rackmount systems. These technologies include:

• Switched Computing over Infiniband
  
• 64-bit PowerPC and x86 processors, multi-core processors
  
• Composite materials for cooling and enhanced lightweight enclosures
  
• Remote High Speed I/O
  
• Software resource managers.
  

Infiniband (IB) is the leading switch fabric in high performance computing applications. Themis is incorporating IB into our VME and rack level products. We provide the relevant software driver and protocol stacks to enable legacy and native high performance access to storage and networking.

The new generation of 64-bit processors brings new levels of performance and functionality to embedded applications. High bandwidth paths to memory have made AMD's Opteron processor the new performance leader in Server markets. IBM's PowerPC970 includes vector execution units that provide world class signal processing performance. The IB switch fabric enables mixing of boards based on different processors.

Cooling is the biggest challenge when embedding the highest performance processors in small form-factors. New composite materials offer the capability to build light weight and efficient heatsinks and enclosures. These materials enable the next generations of server class processors to be used in existing chassis and racks.

Separating I/O from the compute node provides several advantages. In most applications I/O changes at a slower rate than computing performance. Decoupling I/O from compute nodes enables upgrading different parts of a system at their own pace. This reduces overall lifetime cost and enables the latest technology to be deployed when it becomes available.

Allocating resources exactly where they are needed reduces life-cycle costs. Today over-provisioning is used to meet worst-case demand. Themis is offering a computing resource manager that allocates resources on a millisecond time scale. The resource manager increases quality of service and reliability.

Combining these technologies into a family of products offers supercomputing performance in 6U or less.

Organiser(s): Chris Parkman / PH-ESS