What is GPU-Accelerated Computing?

What is GPU-Accelerated Computing?

GPU-accelerated computing is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU) together with a CPU to accelerate deep learning, analytics, and engineering applications. Pioneered in 2007 by NVIDIA, GPU accelerators now power energy-efficient data centers in government labs, universities, enterprises, and small-and-medium businesses around the world. They play a huge role in accelerating applications in platforms ranging from artificial intelligence to cars, drones, and robots. Source - Navidia

History of GPUs

Originally, the primary purpose of GPU applications were for rendering graphics only. The history of graphics chips can be traced back to the 1980s, but the first consumer-level and “modern” equivalent to what we think of as a GPU was the NVIDIA® GeForce 256 (also called NV10) which was released in 1999. NVIDIA® marketed it as “the world’s first ‘GPU’” and is generally credited with popularizing the term. Source - icc-usa

Shop IRON GPU series include a selection of most reliable GPU server hardware for GPU computing.Recommended for the most demanding GPU applications, GPU FatTwin offers the industry’s highest density and efficiency in a 4U form factor.

The Importance of Cable Management

1. Fire Safety

Another important reason to think about data center cable management has to do with fire safety. If cables become tangled and are not properly managed, they are much more likely to lead to sparks and even a fire if the situation is left unchecked for a long enough period of time. Likewise, someone could walk near a bundle of cables, trip and yank a cable out of its socket. This could also lead to a fire or even damaging the equipment that cable was connected to.


2. Troubleshooting

One of the first steps to troubleshooting a piece of electronic equipment always involves testing the data transfer cable to make sure that it is still in good working order. Such a simple task becomes infinitely more complex if you’re looking at dozens (or in certain cases hundreds) of tangled cables that are in disarray. The ability to easily swap out cables, quickly access the Networking Cables you need to maintain, troubleshoot hardware and perform other basic tasks is another one of the many reasons why data center cable management is so important.

Tips for Data Center Cable Management

• Use color to identify cables.
• Keep cables cool
• Remove abandoned cables
• Use cable labeling

Best SSD and HDD Manufacturers Companies

1- Intel: -  Intel Corporation was founded on July 18, 1968, by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, and widely associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove. The company's name was conceived as the portmanteau of the words integrated and electronics. The fact that "intel" is the term for intelligence information also made the name appropriate. Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, which represented the majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the success of the personal computer (PC) that this became its primary business. During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the computer industry. During this period Intel became the dominant supplier of microprocessors for PCs, Intel Solid State Drive and was known for aggressive and anti-competitive tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), as well as a struggle with Microsoft for control over the direction of the PC industry (Source)

2- Supermicro: - Designs, develops, manufactures and sells servers based on the x86-64 architectures. The company's offerings include rackmount, tower and blade server systems, high-end workstations, storage server systems, motherboards, chassis, and server components branded under the Server Building Block Solutions product line.

Supermicro was founded in 1993 by engineer and current CEO Charles Liang. The company was incorporated in Delaware in August 2006 and had its IPO in March 2007. As of June 30, 2012, Supermicro employed 1,472 full-time employees and 31 consultants at its operations in the United States, Europe, and Asia with customers in over 89 countries.(Source)

3- HGST: -  Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was founded on January 6, 2003, as a merger of the hard disk drive businesses of IBM and Hitachi.Hitachi paid IBM US$2.05 billion for its HDD business.

On October 19, 2015, Western Digital Corporation announced a decision from China's Ministry of Commerce ("MOFCOM") which enabled the company to integrate substantial portions of its HGST and WD subsidiaries under Western Digital Corporation ("Western Digital"), but they must offer both HGST and WD product brands in the market and maintain separate sales teams for two years from the date of the decision. As such, as of October 19, 2015, HGST is a Western Digital brand, and no longer a separate entity. (Source).

4- Micron: - Micron Technology, Inc. is an American global corporation based in Boise, Idaho which produces many forms of semiconductor devices, including dynamic random-access memory, flash memory and Micron solid-state drives. Its consumer products are marketed under the brands Crucial Technology and Lexar. Micron and Intel together created IM Flash Technologies, which produces NAND flash memory. Micron was named one of Thomson Reuters top 100 global innovators in 2012 and 2013.Micron Technology has also ranked among the Top 5 Semiconductor producing companies in the world (Source)

5- SanDisk: - SanDisk is an American manufacturer of flash memory products, including memory cards and readers, USB flash drives, and SanDisk solid state drives. As of February 2015, it is the third-largest manufacturer of flash memory.

On May 12, 2016, SanDisk was acquired by hard drive manufacturer Western Digital in a US$19 billion deal. (Source)

Top 8 Server Brands of 2016 Q2

8- Oracle :

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation, headquartered in Redwood Shores, California. The company primarily specializes in developing and marketing database software and technology, cloud engineered systems and enterprise software products—particularly its own brands of database management systems. In 2015 Oracle was the second-largest software maker by revenue, after Microsoft. Oracle Servers


7- Dell : 

Dell sold personal computers (PCs), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals, HDTVs, cameras, printers, MP3 players, and electronics built by other manufacturers. The company was well known for its innovations in supply chain management and electronic commerce, particularly its direct-sales model and its "build-to-order" or "configure to order" approach to manufacturing—delivering individual PCs configured to customer specifications. Dell was a pure hardware vendor for much of its existence, but with the acquisition in 2009 of Perot Systems, Dell entered the market for IT services. The company has since made additional acquisitions in storage and networking systems, with the aim of expanding their portfolio from offering computers only to delivering complete solutions for enterprise customers.



6- Intel :

Intel Corporation was founded on July 18, 1968 by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, and widely associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove. The company's name was conceived as portmanteau of the words integrated and electronics. The fact that "intel" is the term for intelligence information also made the name appropriate.[4] Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, which represented the majority of its business until 1981.


5- Super Micro Computer :

Supermicro was founded in 1993 by engineer and current CEO Charles Liang. The company was incorporated in Delaware in August 2006 and had its IPO in March 2007. As of June 30, 2012, Supermicro employed 1,472 full-time employees and 31 consultants at its operations in the United States, Europe, and Asia with customers in over 89 countries. The company offers its products through value-added resellers, system integrators, and original equipment manufacturers, as well as through its direct sales force.


4- IBM :

IBM is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) and was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924.


3- Cisco Systems :

Geographically disparate computers over a multi protocol router system, which was unheard of technology at the time. By the time the company went public in 1990, when it was listed on the NASDAQ, Cisco had a market capitalization of $224 million. Cisco was the most valuable company in the world by 2000, with a more than $500 billion market capitalization.


2- Lenovo :

Lenovo was founded in Beijing in 1984 as Legend and was incorporated in Hong Kong in 1988. Lenovo acquired IBM's personal computer business in 2005 and agreed to acquire its Intel-based server business in 2014. Lenovo entered the smartphone market in 2012 and as of 2014 is the largest vendor of smartphones in Mainland China. In January 2014, Lenovo agreed to acquire the mobile phone handset maker Motorola Mobility from Google, and in October 2014 the deal was finalized.


1- HPE :

HPE is an American multinational enterprise information technology company based in Palo Alto, California, founded on 1 November 2015 as part of splitting of the Hewlett-Packard company. HPE is a business-focused organization with four divisions: Enterprise Group, which works in servers, storage, networking, consulting and support; Services; Software; and Financial Services.

A Brief Introduction About High Performance Computing

By definition, supercomputers are the fastest and most powerful computers available, and at present the term refers to machines with hundreds of thousands of processors. They are the superstars of the high–performance class of computers. Personal computers (PCs) small enough in size and cost to be used by an individual, yet powerful enough for advanced scientific and engineering applications, can also be high–performance computers. We define High Performance Computing as machines with a good balance among the following major elements:

● Multi staged (pipelined) functional units.

● Multiple central processing units (CPUs) (parallel machines).

● Multiple cores.

● Fast central registers.

● Very large, fast memories.

● Very fast communication among functional units.

● Vector, video, or array processors.

● Software that integrates the above effectively.

As a simple example, it makes little sense to have a CPU of incredibly high speed coupled to a memory system and software that cannot keep up with it.

HPC and supercomputers are often associated with large, government-funded agencies or with academic institutions. However, most High Performance Computing today is in the commercial sector, in fields such as aerospace, automotive, semiconductor design, large equipment design and manufacturing, energy exploration, and financial computing.

HPC is used in other domains in which very large computations—such as fluid dynamics, electromagnetic simulations, and complex materials analysis—must be performed to ensure a high level of accuracy and predictability, resulting in higher quality, and safer, more efficient products. For example, HPC is used to model the aerodynamics, thermal characteristics, and mechanical properties of an automotive sub assembly or components to find exactly the right design that balances efficiency, reliability, cost, and safety, before spending millions of dollars prototyping a real product.

Image Source :- http://ibmdeepcomputing.tumblr.com/image/25850918222 

HPC is also found in domains such as 2D and 3D rendering for media and entertainment, genomics and proteomics analysis for life sciences and healthcare, Oil and gas reservoir simulation for energy exploration, and design verification for the semiconductor industry. In the financial sector, HPC is used to perform institutional liquidity simulations and to predict the future values and risks of complex investments. In architectural design, HPC is used to model everything from the structural properties of a building, to the efficiency of its cooling systems under thousands of different input parameters, resulting in millions of different simulation scenarios.

Over time, the growing use of High Performance Computing in research and in the commercial sector, particularly in manufacturing, finance, and energy exploration, coupled with a growing catalog of High Performance Computing applications, created a trend toward HPC platforms built to handle a wider variety of workloads, and these platforms are constructed using more widely available components. This use of commodity hardware components characterizes the cluster and grid era of High Performance Computing. Clusters and grids continue to be the dominant methods of deploying High Performance Computing in both the commercial and research/academic sectors. Economies of scale, and the need to centrally manage resources across large organizations with diverse requirements, have resulted in the practical reality that widely divergent applications are often run on the same, shared HPC infrastructure.

High performance computing can happen on:

● A workstation, desktop, laptop, smartphone!

● A supercomputer

● A Linux/MacOS/Windows/... cluster

● A grid or a cloud

● Cyber infrastructure = any combination of the above


Reference :- 

http://www.shodor.org/media/content/petascale/materials/UPModules/beginnersGuideHPC/moduleDocument_pdf.pdf 

https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/Intro_to_HPC_on_AWS.pdf

Pros and Cons of Hard disk drive and Solid state drive

SSD vs HDD

What is Solid-state drive?

A solid-state drive (SSD), also known as a solid-state disk is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently. SSD technology primarily uses electronic interfaces compatible with traditional block input/output (I/O) hard disk drives, which permit simple replacements in common applications. Additionally, new I/O interfaces, like SATA Express and M.2 have been designed to address specific requirements of the SSD technology.

What is Hard disk drive?

A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive or fixed disk is a data storage device used for storing and retrieving digital information using one or more rigid rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. HDDs are a type of non-volatile memory, retaining stored data even when powered off.

Seagate 5mm 500GB Laptop Ultrathin HDD

Pros and Cons of HDD


Pro’s

• Is in your possession so you know it is safe.
• You can buy very large storage units for fairly cheap now-a-days.
• Don’t have to be connected to the internet to transfer data to external hard drives.
• Transfer speed is relatively faster, doesn’t depend on your connection.

Con’s

• Can be knocked off a desk or damaged accidentally.
• If an external hard drive breaks you have to send it in which usually means whipping the data on it.
• Hard Disk Drive can’t be accessed from anywhere outside of your local network.
• Going along with the local network, you can only share data with others when you’re physically together.
• As with all physical computer parts, they age.
• Some aren’t compatible with both Windows and Mac computers, you have to format them to work on both types of Operating Systems in some cases.
• It adds an extra thing to your desk space (more chords dangling).

Pros and Cons of SSDPro’s

• Speed:  Traditional hard drives rely on a spinning disk—much like a record player—which must start spinning before it can be accessed.  After this, the head of the drive must then find the correct point of access for the information   Solid State Hard Drives use flash memory which has the ability to go directly to the correct data automatically.   The result is faster boot times, as well as faster access and save times for your apps and files.  While this time might be almost unoticable to the average pc user, those who have many large files and programs—such as video editing software, extensive video files, gaming apps, etc—SDD Drives are worth looking at in terms of the time saved.
• Noise: SDD Solid State Drives are virtually silent.  Traditional hard drives can be somewhat noisy, due to the spindle having to revolve within the drive enclosure.  Desktop drives can make considerable noise in particular.
• Size and Weight: Solid State Drives are much smaller and lighter than traditional drives, making them especially popular for mobile computing solutions like notebooks and net books.
• Performance and Durability: Solid State Drives do not have as much wear and tear compared to traditional drives.Also, Solid State Drives do not suffer from fragmentation issues, and thus do not have to be de-fragmented as do traditional drives.  SDD Drives on average will have smaller failure rate, and will be more resistant to shock damage created by drops and bumps.
• Power Savings:  SSD Drives generally use less power than disk drives.

CONS: 

• Cost: While the costs are falling at the present time, Solid State Drives are still more expensive than traditional hard drives.
• Capacity: SSD Drives generally have much less capacity than traditional drives.  While there are 1TB SSD drives out there, the cost of a good one is a couple thousand dollars, making it impractical for most consumers and businesses.

In E-commerce Era You can buy HDD & SSD online from many Trust able Websites Amazon, Shop IRON, ebay.

Barebone Rackmount Server System and Chassis

E-commerce website Shop IRON is a trusted name in barebone Server. Shop IRON offers wide range of Rackmount servers for different industries as per their usage, need and requirement. Buy rack mount server systems at reasonable price with fast and safe shipping right to your doorstep. 

1- Supermicro Superserver SYS-5019S-MT

Supermicro Superserver SYS-50195-MT

CPU	Single socket H4 (LGA 1151) supports Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 v5, Intel® 6th Gen. Core™ i3 series
Chipset	Intel® C236 chipset
Drive Bays	4x 3.5" Hot-swap SATA3 bays w/ RAID
Memory Capacity	Up to 64GB Unbuffered ECC UDIMM DDR4 2133MHz; 4x DIMM slots
Expansion Slots	1 PCI-E 3.0 x8 AOC slot
Network Controllers	2x 10GBase-T ports with Intel® X550
IPMI	Integrated IPMI 2.0 and KVM with Dedicated LAN
Input / Output	I/O ports: 1x VGA, 2x COM, 2x USB 3.0 (front/rear), USB 2.0
Power Supply	350W High-efficiency Power Supply Platinum Level Certified

For More Information : https://shop.ironnetworks.com/supermicro-superserver-sys-5019s-mt

2- Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5018D-FN8T

Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5018D-FN8T

CPU	Intel® Xeon® processor D-1518, Single socket FCBGA 1667; 4-Core, 8 Threads, 35W
Drive Bays	1x 3.5" or 4x 2.5" drive bays with bracket
Expansion Slots	1x PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4, M Key 2242/2280/22110, Mini-PCIe with mSATA support
Memory Capacity	Up to 128GB ECC RDIMM DDR4 2133MHz or 64GB ECC/non-ECC UDIMM in 4 sockets
Network Controllers	Dual 10G SFP+ and Six 1GbE LAN
Input / Output	I/O: 2x USB 3.0, VGA
System Cooling	Passive CPU heat sink and 3x 40mm chassis fans
Input / Output	DOM power connector
Power Supply	200W Low-noise power supply w/ PFC

For More Information : https://shop.ironnetworks.com/supermicro-superserver-sys-5018d-fn8t

3- Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5018A-FTN4

Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5018A-FTN4

CPU	Intel® Atom processor C2758, SoC, FCBGA 1283, 20W 8-Core
CPU	Intel® System-on-Chip Design
Drive Bays	2x 3.5" Fixed SATA3 HDD bays or 4x 2.5" SATA2 HDD optional
Expansion Slots	1x PCI-E 2.0 x8 slot
Memory Capacity	Up to 64GB DDR3 1600MHz ECC SO-DIMM in 4 DIMM slots
Network Controllers	Quad GbE ports, IPMI w/ dedicated LAN
Input / Output	DOM power connector
Power Supply	200W Low-noise power supply w/ PFC
Advantages	Support Intel® QuickAssist Acceleration Technology

For More Information : https://shop.ironnetworks.com/supermicro-superserver-sys-5018a-ftn4

4 - Supermicro SuperServer SYS-7048R-CTR4+

SupermicroSuperServer 7048R-C1R4+

CPU	Dual socket R3 (LGA 2011) supports Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v4†/ v3 family; QPI up to 9.6GT/s
Memory Capacity	Up to 3TB† ECC 3DS LRDIMM , up to DDR4- 2400†MHz ; 24x DIMM slots
Expansion Slots	2x PCI-E 3.0 x16, 3x PCI-E 3.0 x8, and 1x PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8) slot
Network Controllers	Quad LAN w/ Intel® i350 GbE
Input / Output	I/O ports: 2x SuperDOM, 1x VGA, 2x COM, 2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0
Drive Bays	8x 3.5" Hot-swap SATA3 HDD Bays; 8x 2.5" Hot-swap SAS3 drives in mobile rack; 1x 5.25" drive bay
Power Supply	920W Redundant Power Supplies Platinum Level (94%)
Chassis	Tower or Rackmount

For More Information : https://shop.ironnetworks.com/supermicro-superserver-sys-7048r-c1r4

5 - Supermicro SuperServer SYS-50195-ML

SupermicroSuperServer SYS-5019S-ML

CPU	Single socket H4 (LGA 1151) supports Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 v5, Intel® 6th Gen. Core™ i3 series
Chipset	Intel® C236 chipset
Drive Bays	2x 3.5" Fixed drive bay or 3x 2.5" drive option
Memory Capacity	Up to 64GB ECC/non-ECC UDIMM DDR4 2133MHz; 4x DIMM slots
Expansion Slots	1x PCI-E 3.0 x8 AOC slot
Network Controllers	2x GbE ports with Intel® i210-AT 1x shared IPMI port
Input / Output	I/O ports: 1x VGA, 1x COM, 2x USB 2.0, USB 3.0
Power Supply	350W Platinum Level power supply

For More Information : https://shop.ironnetworks.com/supermicro-superserver-sys-5019s-ml

Visit for all Rackmount Servers