SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to Support 8,192 Cores for High Performance Computing

SUSE supports SGI UV series, the largest single-image system in the industry

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Nov 13, 2014, 08:30 ET

NUREMBERG, Germany, Nov. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- SUSE® today announced it will support the largest single-image system available in the industry – the SGI UV series – by increasing the number of supported logical cores to 8,192 in the recently released SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12. As a result, customers will be able to take advantage of faster, higher-performing hardware for years to come with increased performance, energy efficiency and reliability.

"SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 is designed to handle mission-critical workloads in the data center," said Ralf Flaxa, SUSE vice president of engineering. "It offers a highly scalable, high-performance solution that includes application security, virtualization and integrated systems management across a full range of hardware architectures. With advanced memory management and new processor support, Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL), and advanced multi-pathing and I/O capabilities, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is at the top for performance and scalability for large-scale server deployments."

Dr. Eng Lim Goh, SGI senior vice president and CTO, said, "At SGI, our focus is on high-performance computing and robust scalability, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the operating system of choice for many of our customers. SGI® UV™ systems provide a current maximum logical core support of 4,096 cores with the current hardware. As requirements for high-performance computing grow more complex across industries, it is only a matter of time until we provide the next generation of SGI systems that will fully exploit the new capabilities in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to support a scalability up to 8,192 cores. The collaboration between SGI and SUSE ensures SUSE Linux Enterprise will continue to be the leading operating system for high-performance clusters that meet those new business needs today."

HPC Enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is synonymous with high-performance Linux running on 64-bit and mainframe systems. The increase in scalability of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 is combined with other innovative features and improvements for large systems. Performance of memory- and compute-intensive workloads is increased through support for transparent huge pages, while support for transparent per-CPU load balancing on multiqueue devices and faster packet filtering improve network performance. Enhanced control groups (I/O throttling and memory cgroup controller optimization) also improves system performance for customers.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server enables multiple virtual machines to run varied data center workloads in native and virtualized environments, and it is massively scalable and executes threads in parallel with each individual processor. Hardware vendors have already certified systems with 4,096 logical cores and 64 TB of physical memory, with the system limits at 8,192 logical cores and 1 PB of RAM in a single system.

Provided file systems are suited for large-scale environments, including XFS, a high-performance journaling file system which originated on the SGI IRIX platform. Oracle Cluster File System 2 (OCFS2), the only symmetrical parallel cluster file system to be accepted into the Linux mainline kernel, has been designed to host and perform on larger files in a clustered environment, making it an ideal fit for hosting virtual server disk images in a high-availability configuration. Btrfs provides for improved services availability and data integrity with copy-on-write functionalities, integrated volume management and checksums. New snapshot and rollback capabilities offer improved resilience.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 ships the latest version of Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) 3.12, which enables affordable, high-speed remote direct memory access (RDMA) capable fabrics and unified interconnects based on InfiniBand and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Also included are systems and performance tracing tools such SystemTap or LTTng 2.0.

In addition, SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 supports Systemd, a new system and service manager designed for Linux. Systemd can manage the entire boot process, and it allows starting services in parallel, which means more work can be done concurrently at system startup. The Cgroups interface built into Systemd allows for easier prioritization of applications or threads.

SGI UV
SGI UV is the ideal platform to accelerate the pace of innovation in all areas of decision support, genomics and bioscience, chemistry and materials, physics, integrative systems science, national security, product design, and other data-intensive fields. The latest SGI UV product family can scale a single system image (SSI) to a maximum of 2,048 cores (4,096 threads) because of its innovative NUMAlink interconnect. SGI UV supports the latest Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 product family and can operate unmodified versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. SGI UV is the only solution that currently leverages the power of Intel's latest CPU beyond 4 sockets and 1.5TB memory per system. SGI UV 2000 scales up to 4,096 threads (256 CPU sockets) and up to 64TB of cache-coherent, global shared memory in a single system.

The versatility and high performance of UV allows it to solve the world's toughest computational challenges, whether deployed as an "analysis supernode" in conjunction with a mixed computing environment or used as an independent, standalone system.

For More Information
For more information about SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing and SGI UV, visit booths 3943 (SUSE) and 915 (SGI) at SC14 in New Orleans Nov. 17-20, or see www.suse.com/products/server/hpc.html and www.sgi.com.

About SUSE
SUSE, a pioneer in open source software, provides reliable, interoperable Linux and cloud infrastructure solutions that give enterprises greater control and flexibility. More than 20 years of engineering excellence, exceptional service and an unrivaled partner ecosystem power the products and support that help our customers manage complexity, reduce cost, and confidently deliver mission-critical services. The lasting relationships we build allow us to adapt and deliver the smarter innovation they need to succeed – today and tomorrow. For more information, visit www.suse.com.

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