Recently we talked about the general steps to assemble a 50 TeraFLOP computer for $3,000, courtesy of new AMD hardware aimed at general consumers. But what happens when we focus on server-grade components? Basically, we find things like Project 47, a new collaboration between Sunnyvale and the folks at Inventec. Project 47 is a rack equipped with 20 EPYC processors and 80 Radeon Instinct modules that fully use their available bandwidth, delivering 1 PetaFLOP of single-precision performance without sacrificing efficiency.
From Desktop to Server
AMD hasn't been idle, that's for sure. We've seen some very interesting things at SIGGRAPH 2017, starting with the official presentation of the Radeon RX Vega cards, but Sunnyvale's plans aren't focused exclusively on the desktop. If there's an area where AMD needs to recover a lot of ground, it's servers, and its spearhead is the EPYC processor, Threadripper's big brother that brings 32 cores and 64 threads in its most advanced model. If we combine that chip with the latest MI25 accelerator module (based on Vega silicon) from the Radeon Instinct series, the result is Project 47, a new collaboration between AMD, Inventec, and also Samsung, which provided the SSDs and memory (HBM2 and DDR4).
Inside the Rack
Project 47 has inside 20 Inventec P47 servers, each equipped with an EPYC 7601 processor (the largest of the family) and four MI25 modules. Each EPYC processor delivers 128 PCI Express lanes, which in turn allows the MI25s to work without bandwidth restrictions. Project 47 can deliver a total of 1 PetaFLOP in single precision (binary32), or two PetaFLOPs if we halve the precision. The idea of having 20 processors and 80 modules in a rack makes us imagine a low efficiency level, but we discovered the opposite, as Project 47 presents a respectable 30 GigaFLOPs per watt, thus surpassing several competitors.
Demos and Availability
Live demos for Project 47 involved remote tests in Autodesk Maya, Blender, and Adobe Premiere Pro, along with a render made in Radeon ProRender. The rack will reach the market through AMAX, Inventec's main distributor, before the end of the year. Perhaps the PetaFLOP barrier is still too high for desktop computers, but never say never. If manufacturers continue inserting cores into their chips, who knows...?
