AMD has announced the AMD FirePro S9150 server card, billing it as the “most powerful server graphics processing unit (GPU) ever built for high-performance computing.”
Based on the AMD Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, the first AMD architecture designed specifically with compute workloads in mind, the AMD FirePro S9150 server card is the first server card to support enhanced double precision and break the 2.0 TFLOPS double precision barrier.
With 16GB of GDDR5 memory – 33 percent more than the competition – and maximum power consumption of 235 watts, AMD FirePro S9150 server GPUs provide supercomputers with massive compute performance while maximizing available power budgets.
“Today’s supercomputers feature an increasing mix of GPUs, CPUs and co-processors to achieve great performance, and many of them are being implemented in an environmentally responsible manner to help reduce power and water consumption,” said David Cummings, senior director and general manager, professional graphics, AMD. “Designed for large scale multi-GPU support and unmatched compute performance, AMD FirePro S9150 ushers in a new era of supercomputing. Its memory configuration, compute capabilities and performance per watt are unmatched in its class, and can help take supercomputers to the next level of performance and energy efficiency.”
Support
The AMD FirePro S9150 server card is supported by a powerful software ecosystem, enabling developers to better harness its compute performance. In addition to AMD support for OpenCL, including support for OpenCL 2.0 planned later this year, AMD announced a collaboration with Pathscale to support OpenMP 4.0 for AMD FirePro S9150 and selected other AMD FirePro graphics cards.
“Pathscale’s ENZO Compiler with OpenMP 4.0 and support for C, C++, and Fortran is used by customers in the Oil and Gas, Computational Science, Computer Aided Engineering, and other HPC segments,” said Christopher Bergstrom, CTO, Pathscale. “Our support for the AMD FirePro S9150 will enable these customers to benefit from the tremendous compute performance of AMD’s new server GPU while leveraging their existing investment in OpenMP software.”
“We’re currently testing the AMD FirePro S9150 server card and hands down it’s the fastest HPC GPU accelerator we’ve ever tested. We’re even more excited by the prospects of combining its raw compute performance with OpenCL 2.0 later this year,” said Simon McIntosh-Smith, head of the Microelectronics Research Group at the University of Bristol. “Our research benefits from an open and royalty-free API, and we’re committed to OpenCL™ to accelerate our computations. New features such as Shared Virtual Memory and Nested Parallelism will allow us to make even better use of GPUs to increase performance and efficiency.”
“Supermicro offers the industry’s widest range of GPU server solutions optimized for HPC and supercomputing in 1U, 2U, 3U, 4U SuperServer and 7U SuperBlade platforms,” said Don Clegg, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Supermicro. “Supermicro Green Computing solutions, featuring AMD’s latest AMD FirePro S9150 and AMD FirePro S9050, enable extreme compute density with support for up to 6x GPUs per node in 4U dual node, dual processor configurations, maximizing performance per watt, per dollar, per square foot.”
“ASUS is pleased to feature AMD FirePro S9150 accelerators to enable server workstations with dedicated and reliable functionality matched with double precision floating point performance,” said Tom Lin, general manager, ASUS. “We’re dedicated to offering our customers solutions that deliver the most performance possible, and the energy efficiency and performance-per-watt of the AMD FirePro S9150 are an added bonus our customers will greatly appreciate.”
“Unlike other GPU accelerators, AMD FirePro S9150 features enhanced double precision, eliminating the need to buy a more expensive accelerator to get similar performance,” said Etay Lee, general manager at GIGABYTE’s Network & Communications Division. “Together with AMD, our product delivers the right solution for the market to enable power-efficient performance for supercomputer-class results.”
“AMD FirePro S9150 GPU accelerators will be an outstanding addition to our product line, allowing us to offer our customers solutions that deliver maximum performance,” said Albert Mu, vice president of MiTAC International Corp.’s TYAN Business Unit. “During the testing and evaluation of the AMD FirePro S9150 with TYAN servers, our team was impressed with the sheer horsepower. It far exceeded our expectations and our customers will be anxious to take advantage of that horsepower to accelerate their compute-intensive workloads.”
The AMD FirePro S9150 server GPU features 5.07 TFLOPS of peak single-precision floating point performance; 16GB GDDR5 memory, 512-bit memory interface and up to 320 GB/s memory bandwidth; 2,816 stream processors (44 GCN compute units); and support for Error Correcting Code Memory (external).
AMD FirePro S9050 server GPU
Additionally, AMD introduced the new AMD FirePro S9050 server GPU with 12GB of ultra-fast GDDR5 memory, ECC Memory support, cutting-edge graphics and compute performance. The new server GPU delivers 3.23 TFLOPS of peak single precision, plus 806 GFLOPS of double precision floating-point performance for effortless processing of challenging compute workloads.
The AMD FirePro S9050 server GPU features 12GB GDDR5 memory, 384-bit memory interface and up to 264 GB/s memory bandwidth; 1,792 stream processors (28 GCN compute units); OpenCL 1.2 support; Error Correcting Code Memory support (internal and external); and 225W maximum power consumption.
Both of the AMD FirePro S9150 and S9050 server GPUs feature PCIe x16 dual slot form factors and passive thermal solutions more compatible with server environments.
Additionally, both cards support AMD STREAM technology which powers the ecosystem that enables AMD FirePro S-Series server GPUs to be used for compute intensive workflows leveraging the massively parallel processing power of AMD GPUs, and to accelerate many applications beyond just graphics.
AMD FirePro S9150 and S9050 are expected to be available for purchase in Q3 from AMD global distribution partner SAPPHIRE Technology, and compatible servers and motherboards for the AMD FirePro S9150 are also available from server integrators ASUS, GIGABYTE, Supermicro and TYAN.
