Mellanox IB to Accelerate the World’s Next Fastest Supercomputers

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a supplier of interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, announced that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Summit supercomputer, which is anticipated to become the world’s fastest supercomputer, is on target for completion in early 2018.

The system utilizes dual-rail Mellanox EDR 100Gb/s IB to interconnect thousands of compute nodes containing both IBM POWER CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs, delivering 200Gb/s network speed to each of the compute platform.

CORAL (Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Lawrence Livermore National Labs) is a project that was initiated in 2013 to develop the technology that would address the Department of Energy’s future computing needs. After an evaluation, the collaboration between Mellanox, IBM and NVIDIA was selected by the CORAL project team for the Summit supercomputer in Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Sierra supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

“The advanced IB capabilities will enhance the ability of applications to effectively communicate latency-sensitive data,” said Jim Rogers, computing and facilities director, National Center for Computational Sciences, ORNL. “The net result will be a well-balanced system that holds the promise for dramatically improving performance for DOE’s mission-critical applications.“

“Simulations of the safety and reliability of elements of the American nuclear deterrent require arguably the most complex and sophisticated 3D applications on the planet,” said Michel McCoy, head of Livermore’s advanced simulation and computing program. “These efforts require the full capability of machines of this magnitude, and for these systems to effectively run these codes, extremely low latency, high bandwidth communication across the platform is essential.“

“The Summit supercomputer will provide revolutionary application performance by leveraging the most advanced interconnect in the world,” said Michael Kagan, CTO, Mellanox. “On behalf of every employee at Mellanox, we are proud to be a part of this historical milestone in HPC, and to have contributed to the profound discoveries and research that this system will enable.“

“The Power9 based IBM Power Systems being deployed as part of Summit Super-computing will be an important milestone in high performance computing to advance scientific discovery,” said Dave Turek, VP, HPC, IBM. “Together, with Mellanox and NVIDIA we created a formidable combination in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Labs that will deliver a new era in super-computing.“

“NVIDIA and Mellanox together have a successful history of building Top500 systems together,” said Ian Buck, GM and VP of accelerated computing, NVIDIA. “Now we are building on that experience with IBM to deliver a new era in super-computing.“