Intel-born networking tech resurfaces as InfiniBand alternative for DoE supers

This week the Department of Energy powered on a new cluster at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and gluing it all together is Intel spinoff Cornelis Network’s Omni-Path interconnect tech. Lynx is a relatively modest bit of iron, at least as DoE supers go, packing 952 Dell Technologies PowerEdge nodes powered by Intel’s aging 4th-gen Xeon Scalable processors, codenamed Sapphire Rapids.

The short version

• The system, commissioned by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will provide additional compute capacity for some of America’s most secretive workloads.  But what sets the machine apart isn’t the compute, but rather its choice of interconnect.
• Most DoE systems today either use HPE Cray’s proprietary Slingshot 11 or Nvidia’s InfiniBand networking.
• Lynx uses neither, instead opting for Cornelis Network’s CN5000-series Omni-Path switches and NICs.
• REG AD “The collaboration between the NNSA ASC program and Cornelis has been rooted in a shared commitment to advance high-performance computing.

What the source reports

Lynx reflects the results of that public-private R&D investment and will support the modeling, simulation, and analysis capabilities that underpin the modern NNSA complex,” Matt Leininger, a senior principal HPC strategist at LLNL, said in a statement . REG AD If Omni-Path sounds familiar, that’s because it’s been around in one shape or form for the better part of a decade. Originally developed by Intel in 2015 for HPC applications, the lossless interconnect is similar in many respects to InfiniBand.

Why it matters

Several DoE Labs were early adopters, including Los Alamos National Lab’s Trinity super and the Cori machine, before Intel pulled the plug in 2019.

Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at The Register — Networks via the links above and below.