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Dell Delivers HPC To All With New PowerEdge C-Series

by Adam Armstrong

Today Dell Inc. announced the latest edition to its 13th generation PowerEdge server portfolio, the PowerEdge C6320. Dell claims that the C6320 can deliver two times performance improvement on the leading High-Performance Computing (HPC) benchmark (999 gigaflops on a single server). The C6320 mixes cost-effective compute and storage in a 2U chassis and is designed to meet the needs of demanding workloads such as Web-tech and cloud computing.


Today Dell Inc. announced the latest edition to its 13th generation PowerEdge server portfolio, the PowerEdge C6320. Dell claims that the C6320 can deliver two times performance improvement on the leading High-Performance Computing (HPC) benchmark (999 gigaflops on a single server). The C6320 mixes cost-effective compute and storage in a 2U chassis and is designed to meet the needs of demanding workloads such as Web-tech and cloud computing.

Big Data is increasing appealing as a new asset to gain insights. However the notion of tackle Big Data to extract these insights can be a bit daunting. One possible notion is to use HPC for analyzing Big Data. Using HPC could provide rapid and reliable information to business owners helping them make more informed decisions in the future. Dell’s PowerEdge C6320 is a future-ready, purpose built HPC solution that can help organizations realize the benefits of Big Data.

The C6320 offers a considerable improvement in performance over the last generation. On the LinPack spec, the C6320 provides up to two times the performance improvement. The SPECint_rate benchmark showed up to 45% improvement and the Spec_Power benchmark (measuring power efficiency) showed a 28% improvement. These performance and power efficiency improvements enable customers to optimize their applications and productivity with a smaller footprint.

If customers have exceptionally demanding HPC workloads they can combine the C6320 with the Dell PowerEdge C4130. The C4130 is a 1U flexible rack that is GPU dense and is purpose built for speeding the most demanding workloads. The C4130 is no slouch when it comes to performance either, with up to 33% better GPU/accelerator density than its closest competitor and 400% more PCIe GPU/accelerator than a comparable HP system the C4130 can also achieve over 7.2 Teraflops and has a performance/watt ratio of up to 4.17 Gigaflops per watt.

Another market trend is the increase in hyper-convergence. According to IDC, sales of hyper-converged systems are expected to increase 116.2% in 2015 over the previous year to $806.8 million. The market is expected to experience a 59.7 percent compound annual growth rate from 2014 to 2019, when it will generate more than $3.9 billion in total sales. Dell’s Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO: RAIL and Dell’s XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances make up the fastest growing part of the overall converged infrastructure market. The C6320, with its embedded management software, makes an ideal platform for Dell’s hyper-converged solutions. The C6320 comes with the right amount of compute, performance, and storage enabling customers to quickly deploy, maintain and manage their solutions.

While there are several use cases for the PowerEdge C6320 other than those listed above (including scientific research, financial services, oil and gas exploration, VDI, and SDS) one place where it has already been put to use is in the University Of San Diego’s Supercomputer Center. The C6320 powers Comet, a new petascale supercomputer designed to transform advanced scientific computing by expanding access and capacity among traditional as well as research domains. Comet includes 27 racks of PowerEdge C6320 compute nodes and is designed to optimize capacity for modest-scale jobs. Totaling 1,944 nodes or 46,656 cores, Comet provides a five-fold increase in compute capacity versus SDSC’s previous HPC system.

PowerEdge C6320 specifications:

  • Form factor: 2U
  • CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3
  • Nodes per chassis: 4 independent
  • Cores: 18 per socket (144 per 2U chassis)
  • Memory: 512GB DDR4
  • Local storage (max): 72TB
  • iDRAC8 Lifecycle controller

Availability

The Dell PowerEdge C6320, along with its Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL, is expected to be available in July 2015. Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances with C6320 is expected to be available in the fourth quarter this year.

Dell PowerEdge Servers

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