New software platform delivers simplicity, speed and flexibility
Today, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced new 
high-performance computing (HPC) solutions, including a comprehensive software-defined platform, enhancements to its Apollo servers, as well as, a new ANSYS computer-aided engineering (CAE) software based solution designed to help manufacturing organizations optimize their design simulation deployments.
Once the domain of academics and research institutions, HPC is rapidly making its way into industries like energy, life sciences, financial services and manufacturing. While organizations in these industries recognize the technology’s strategic importance, perceived complexity and diversity of HPC environments may appear to outweigh the business benefits. Today’s HPE announcement dramatically simplifies the deployment and management of HPC solutions, ensuring companies of all sizes can now accelerate their HPC projects and create competitive differentiation for their business.
“As the global HPC market leader with 35.9 percent market share HPE is upping the ante with new additions to its already-large HPE Apollo portfolio of purpose-built solutions,” said Steve Conway, Research Vice President in IDC’s High Performance Computing group. “These innovative solutions aim to accelerate HPC adoption by organizations of all sizes and segments by enabling faster time to value and increased competitive differentiation through better parallel processing performance, along with reduced complexity and deployment time.”
New Software-Defined Platform for HPC
To simplify and accelerate the configuration, deployment and management of clusters for HPC, HPE is introducing a highly flexible, simple and comprehensive software-defined platform for HPC using the new HPE Core HPC Software Stack with HPE Insight Cluster Management Utility v8.0.
Designed to meet the needs of server cluster environments that may need to scale to thousands of compute nodes, the HPE Core HPC Software Stack is a pre-integrated, pre-tested single software suite that combines open source-based application development tools, libraries, and compilers with HPE cluster management capabilities including HPEiLO and simple cluster set up tools. This suite enables developers, IT administrators, engineers and researchers to quickly and easily develop, test, deploy and manage their HPC environments.
“As a leading research institution focused on applied research in the life sciences industry, we are under continuous pressure to optimize our HPC operations to meet the demanding needs of our users,” said Peter Longreen, COO National Life Science Supercomputer, Technical University of Denmark, Deputy head ELIXIR Denmark. “HPE Insight CMU has provided us with comprehensive functionality to effectively manage our large cluster environment with rapid bare metal provisioning, simple monitoring with remote management and easy integration with a wide variety of cluster components.”
HPC Systems Design Innovation (Apollo 2000 and Apollo 6000)
Complementing the new HPE Core HPC software suite to accelerate the performance of customers’ HPC workloads and reduce the complexity of their infrastructure, HPE is introducing systems innovations that build on the latest technologies from the HPE Apollo technology partner ecosystem. These new system capabilities are designed to be managed by the HPE Core HPC Software Stack.
HPE is further enhancing the software defined Apollo HPC platform by introducing systems design innovations for the Apollo 6000 system with new HPE ProLiant XL260a server trays based on the next generation of the Intel® Xeon Phi™ processor family and the Intel® Omni-Path Architecture (Intel® OPA)to reduce latency, and increase bandwidth and performance. HPE is also enhancing the Apollo 2000 system and ProLiant DL server platforms with Intel® OPA fabric options. By combining these latest advancements in Intel® Scalable System Framework with the scalability, flexibility and manageability of the HPE Apollo portfolio, customers will gain new levels of performance, efficiency and reliability. In addition, customers will be able to run HPC applications in a massively parallel manner with minimal code modification.
“Bridges uniquely combines HPE’s purpose-built compute platforms optimized for our compute and data-intensive HPC environment with the Intel Omni-Path interconnect fabric designed to minimize latency,” said, Nick Nystrom, Principal Investigator for Bridges at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC). “The tight partnership and broad integration of technologies between Intel and HPE has been instrumental in enabling PSC to design Bridges and to place it into operation with a uniquely integrated infrastructure that delivers unmatched performance and flexibility.”
“The rapid expansion of data sets, precision analytics, and machine learning, are driving our customers to take a fresh look at their infrastructure requirements,” said Charles Wuischpard, vice president Data Center Group, general manager High Performance Computing Platform Group, Intel. “Our Alliance with HPE leverages the Intel® Scalable System Framework, featuring the bootable host Intel® Xeon Phi™ processor and the powerful Intel® Omni-Path Architecture to deliver new levels of scalability, power efficiency and efficient throughput to support complex, highly parallel workloads.”
To provide customers with additional choice and flexibility, HPE is also enhancing HPE Apollo 6000 and HPE Apollo 2000 systems with next-generation EDR 100Gb/sInfiniBand solutions from Mellanox® Technologies. Ideal for HPC clusters that require low latency and high bandwidth networking, Mellanox® EDR fabric technology provides customers the network performance needed to improve response times and alleviate bottlenecks that impact application performance.
Integrated Manufacturing Solution Capabilities for ANSYS
The widespread adoption of CAE software with advanced simulation capabilities has helped manufacturers design new offerings more efficiently, reduce development cycle times and increase competitive differentiation. However, many manufacturers struggle with boosting the necessary compute resources and scaling out the workstation infrastructure to HPC cluster technology. To help customers scale their compute power to better accommodate the escalating demands of increasingly complex simulation models, HPE is introducing the new HPE ANSYS solution for CAE for the manufacturing industry.
The HPE ANSYS solution for CAE is uniquely designed to handle large data sets and address the design prototyping needs of both large enterprises and mid-market customers. Pre-tested on the HPE Apollo 2000, this solution delivers improved application performance, faster resource provisioning and lower total cost of ownership. This includes completing CAE simulation in days compared to weeks, four times higher resource utilization with HPC cluster compared to workstation based solutions and up to two times more compute capacity per square foot.
“HPC is rapidly becoming one of the essential ingredients for the digital economy across organizations of all types and sizes,” said Vikram K, Director, Servers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India. “Today we are excited to unveil new additions to our recently announced portfolio capabilities designed to accelerate accessibility and time to value for HPC by significantly simplifying deployments, streamlining management and boosting performance.”
Pricing and Availability
· The HPE Core HPC Software Stack with HPE Insight Cluster Management Utility V8.0 is now available for download.
· The HPE ANSYS Solution for CAE is available now through HPE and worldwide channel partners. The CAE software is available through ANSYS.
· HPE Apollo 6000 systems with new HPE ProLiant XL260a server trays will be available in September through HPE and worldwide channel partners.
· The Intel® Omni-Path Architecture is now available for initial support on HPE Apollo 6000 and HPE Apollo 2000 systems.
· Mellanox’s EDR 100Gb/s InfiniBand solution is now available for initial support on HPE Apollo 6000 and HPE Apollo 2000 systems.
Additional Information
· High Performance Computing in Three Minutes (video)
