Boosting high-performance computing with optics
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 7:49AM Briefing: Optical Interconnect
Part 2: High-performance computing
IBM has adopted optical interfaces for its latest POWER7-based high-end computer system. Gazettabyte spoke to IBM Fellow, Ed Seminaro, about high-performance computing and the need for optics to address bandwidth and latency requirements.
“At some point when you go a certain distance you have to go to an optical link”
Ed Seminaro, IBM Fellow
IBM has used parallel optics for its latest POWER7 computing systems, the Power 775. The optical interfaces are used to connect computing node drawers that make up the high-end computer. Each node comprises 32 POWER7 chips, with each chip hosting eight processor cores, each capable of running up to four separate programming tasks or threads.
Using optical engines, each node – a specialised computing card - has a total bandwidth of 224, 120 Gigabit-per-second (12x10Gbps) VCSEL-based transmitters and 224, 120Gbps receivers. The interfaces can interconnect up to 2,048 nodes, over half a million POWER7 cores, with a maximum network diameter of only three link hops.
IBM claims that with the development of the Power 775, it has demonstrated the superiority of optics over copper for high-end computing designs.
