Convey : B et t er Co m pu ti n g
for Be tt er An a ly t i cs
From the makers of the world’s
first hybrid-core computer, Convey
unleashes the next generation.
The Convey HC-2™ gives you better
performance, better functionality,
and better energy efficiency.
If you’re a computer researcher, engineer, or IT
manager, you expect the highest possible computational
performance available to help you and your customers
get the job done. Increased performance means you can
research more thoroughly, compete more effectively,
and succeed more decisively.
The laws of physics are currently standing in the way
of continued performance improvements. Increasing
processor frequencies and semiconductor densities
have created a heat and power brick wall.
Today’s computing technology can offer only
incremental performance improvements. To achieve
orders of magnitude increases, you need better
computing technology. Convey gives you better
computing with hybrid-core technology.
HYBRID-CORE: A BETTER WAY
Hybrid-core is a revolutionary technology that breaks
through the heat and power brick wall by
circumventing the power limitations of today’s
commodity processors. The heterogeneous architecture
of Convey’s hybrid-core systems combines the
economies and programmability of industry standard
processors with the performance and efficiency of a
hardware-based, application-specific design.
Convey hybrid-core servers employ a reconfigurable
coprocessor that augments the capabilities of
commodity processors with processing elements
optimized for performance-critical operations.
Instructions executed by the coprocessor appear
as extensions to the x86 instruction set and can
be customized to directly address the application’s
performance needs.
The Convey coprocessor is based on standard
Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) coupled
with standard multi-core Intel® Xeon® processors.
Physically, each processing element has its own local
memory; logically, memory is globally addressable and
coherent, making software development as easy as that
of a standard x86 environment.
The World’s First Hybrid-Core Computer
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WORLD’S FIRST HYBRID-CORE COMPUTER.
VISIT CONVEYCOMPUTER.COM OR CALL 1-866.338.1768
HARDWARE
CONVEY HYBRID-CORE COMPUTING
Convey’s hybrid-core architecture provides better performance, better functionality, and better energy efficiency compared to commodity x86
servers. The Convey HC-2 series attains even greater acceleration by vastly increasing performance on the entire application—even those
portions not assigned to the coprocessor.
BETTER PERFORMANCE
Convey’s newest family of servers, the Convey HC-2 and HC-2 ,
accelerate computing by providing higher absolute performance,
increased functionality, and improved efficiency. The Convey HC-2
systems increase application performance tens of times over
commodity servers and 2-3 times over previous generations of
Convey servers. Earlier versions of the Convey systems improved
performance-critical portions of the application on the coprocessor,
achieving order of magnitude accelerations. Convey’s latest hybridcore systems attain even greater acceleration by vastly increasing
performance on the entire application—even those portions not
assigned to the coprocessor.
ex
Convey’s HC-2 and HC-2 ex provide more flexibility than previous
generations of Convey’s hybrid-core systems. Now available in
a wide range of configurations, you can better tailor the Convey
hybrid-core technology to meet your unique needs. Customers can
choose from a combination of models, memory configuration, and
I/O devices to achieve a custom implementation. By having access
to a range of Intel processors and other options, customers can
now better fit the server configuration to the performance profile
of their particular problem.
Using Convey hybrid-core servers, customers are enjoying record
performance increases and operational efficiencies:
•When used in a popular speech-to-text appliance, Convey
systems convert speech to text at speeds of 100x real-time
or greater, performing the same comprehensive task that
would take 10-20 commodity servers running conventional
recognition software.
•Running Convey’s implementation of the Burrows-Wheeler
Aligner (BWA) bioinformatics application, the HC-2 outperforms
previous generations of Convey servers by 2-3 times and orders
of magnitude over commodity servers.
•For big data analytics applications, the Convey systems’
balanced, hybrid approach provides one of the highest levels
of performance/watt compared to other systems listed on the
Graph5001 benchmark.
1
www.graph500.org
BETTER FUNCTIONALITY
The Convey hybrid-core systems adapt to different workloads
through personalities—reloadable instruction sets specifically
designed to achieve orders of magnitude acceleration in a
variety of applications, including life sciences, data intensive
computing, scientific research, military/defense, automatic speech
recognition, and more.
Personalities implement specialized hardware architectures
designed to execute specific algorithms. They are hardware
designs that execute within the same virtual address space as
the program that calls them. The coprocessor hardware and the
x86 cores on the host system have the same view of memory,
use the same pointers to operate on data, and are subject to the
same protection mechanisms. Moreover, personalities are loaded
transparently as needed by the operating system, allowing multiple
hardware architectures tailored to different algorithms to be used
on a single system.
The coprocessor memory system is built around Convey-designed
Scatter-Gather DIMMs. Convey Scatter-Gather DIMMs are
optimized for random transfers of 8-byte bursts, providing near
peak bandwidth for non-sequential 8-byte accesses. Consequently,
the coprocessor not only provides a higher peak bandwidth
than what is typically available to commodity processors, but
it also delivers a much higher percentage of that peak for nonsequential accesses.
Life Sciences
Modern bioinformatics technologies are generating
vast amounts of data that traditional servers
can’t handle. Convey’s breakthrough hybrid-core
technology dramatically increases performance for
genomics and proteomics applications, saving time
and improving research.
Research
The Convey hybrid-core systems provide the ideal
development platform for exploring heterogeneous
computing architectures. Convey users are on the
research forefront with hybrid-core systems that
provide algorithmic and architectural prototyping
using FPGAs.
Big Data Analytics
Today, there’s not only immensely more data around
us, there’s also a commensurate opportunity to
utilize that data to increase profits, reduce costs,
and improve communications. Pound-for-pound and
watt-for-watt, Convey’s family of reconfigurable
FPGA systems provides superior processing power
on analytics applications.
BETTER ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Using hybrid-core computing technology, you not only achieve
order of magnitude performance increases, you save money in
power and maintenance costs. When used as nodes in a HPC
cluster, Convey hybrid-core systems deliver higher per-node
performance, providing substantially better performance per
watt than conventional clusters. Just one rack of Convey systems
can quickly and easily replace numerous racks of commodity
servers. You can increase the performance of your data center
while cutting power consumption and saving money.
Not only does power savings mean you are saving money, you are
also helping to save the environment. The Convey systems allow
you to “go green” by reducing the number of servers in your HPC
environment, without sacrificing performance.
Government/Military
Government/Defense, national security, and
healthcare applications often call for powerful
solutions within a constrained power, space, and
cooling envelope. The Convey HC series provides
optimal performance/watt and can be reconfigured
on the fly. Plus, Convey systems feature the
programmability and ease-of-deployment of
commodity off the shelf hardware. Convey HC series
delivers an accelerated time to solution while
delivering a power, space and cooling advantage for
both field deployable and data center applications.
Convey : B et t er Co m pu ti n g
for Be tt er An a ly t i cs
SPECIFICATIONS
System
Model
Coprocessor Options
Application
Engines
Memory
HC-2
4x Xilinx®
Virtex-5
LX330 FPGA
Host Options
Model
HC-2
4x Xilinx®
Virtex-6
LX760 FPGA
Processors
Host-110
2x Intel Xeon
Processors X5670
6-core 2.93GHz
Host-210
2x Intel® Xeon®
Processor E5-2609
4-core 2.4GHz
®
®
2x Intel® Xeon®
Processor E5-2670
8-core 2.6GHz
16 Slots
1/2/4 GB
SG-DIMMs
(64 GB max)
ex
System
Memory
I/O
Mechanical
12 Slots
4/8/16 GB
DDR3 DIMM
(192 GB max)
3U
6x 2.5” SATA disk
1570 W Redundant
1 Intel IOM
Power Supplies
24 Slots
4/8/16/32 GB†
DDR3 DIMM
(768 GB max)
8x 2.5” SATA disk 3U
1 PCIe 3.0 x16
1670 W Redundant
1 Intel IOM
Power Supplies
24 Slots
4/8/16/32 GB†
DDR3 DIMM
(768 GB max)
8x 2.5” SATA disk 4U
5 PCIe 3.0 x8
1670 W Redundant
1 Intel IOM
Power Supplies
2x Intel® Xeon®
Processor E5-2643
4-core 3.3GHz
Host-220
2x Intel® Xeon®
Processor E5-2670
8-core 2.6GHz
2x Intel® Xeon®
Processor E5-2643
4-core 3.3GHz
HARDWARE
CONVEY HYBRID-CORE COMPUTING
32 GB DIMMS available 4Q2012
†
BETTER COMPUTING
FOR BETTER ANALYTICS
Don’t settle for incremental performance improvements
using today’s commodity technology. Convey’s
revolutionary hybrid-core systems give you better
computing for better analytics.
The World’s First Hybrid-Core Computer
Xilinx, the Xilinx logo, and Virtex are registered trademarks of Xilinx in the United States and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the
U.S. and other countries. Intel and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
CONV-12-024.3 © 2012 Convey Computer Corporation. Convey Computer, the Convey logo, Convey HC-2, and Convey HC-2ex are trademarks of Convey Computer Corporation. Printed in the U.S.A.
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