In the Quest for Higher Learning, High Density Servers Hold the Key

In August of 2019, GIGABYTE led the market by announcing the H262 Series of High Density Servers, bringing the next generation of AMD EPYC™ processors to customers around the world. The H262 Series was the first to support up to 64 cores per CPU and up to 280W TDP. At the time of its release, it featured the highest density of any air-cooled server available on the market. Its impressive computing power and reliability amazed competitors and clientele alike, making it the natural choice for many High Performance Computing (HPC) system integrators, as well as the go-to solution for building a data center. 《Recommended for you: The EPYC Rise of AMD's New Server Processor》

One such client was an illustrious European technological university. As a research university, its strength is in fields of study that include engineering science, biochemistry, natural science, civil engineering, and mathematics. The academy is the alma mater of many renowned scientists; its contribution to the pursuit of knowledge is undisputed. Its researchers are supported by the large-scale simulation laboratory and data center available on the campus, which cements the institute's position as a champion of scientific research.

As computing technology continues to progress, it is imperative for the university to build the tools to process large quantities of data on very short notice. The university elected to establish a next-generation data center to upgrade its research capabilities and fulfill the demand for high performance computing.

The technological university selected GIGABYTE's H262-Z63, the High Density Server specially designed for supercomputers. Within a narrow 2U chassis, eight 64-core AMD EPYC™ processors were installed to take care of the data center's intense workload with cutting-edge computing power. Complex and extensive computing tasks or data analyses, which are sometimes required by academic research and experiments, could be completed on very short notice or within a limited period of time. The transmission performance of the I/O ports and the digital bandwidth were also improved. As a result, the security of processors, applications, and data was greatly enhanced.《Recommended for you: About GIGABYTE's High Density Server Series》

The chassis of the H262-Z63 houses both the fan system and the power supply, reducing energy consumption and cost of maintenance. The in-built Chassis Management Controller (CMC) monitors the four nodes simultaneously, resulting in less Top of Rack (ToR) cabling and switch connections. This helps to make the entire server easier to manage. The performance and computing power of a single H262-Z63 is nearly that of four standard 1U servers. However, it needs only half the space; it reduces power consumption by 4% and the number of power supply units by 75%; and it lowers the overall number of cables (including for power and 1GbE connection) by 56%. The customer's total cost of ownership is cut drastically as a result.

In terms of system control, a High Density Server with four nodes in a 2U chassis is much more complicated than a 1U server. GIGABYTE combined innovative research and development with in-depth experience to help the processor achieve around 4.2 TeraFLOPS (one trillion floating point operations per second) in the LINPACK benchmark for HPC. This record-shattering performance outstrips competing devices in the same class.

The H262-Z63 performed excellently thanks to three technological breakthroughs:

GIGABYTE Server Management (GSM) is GIGABYTE's multiple server remote management software platform, available as a free download for all of GIGABYTE's server products. Customers can remotely manage their servers to reap the benefits of two outstanding features: A. the Baseboard Management Controller, which supports the latest Redfish® API-Application Programming Interface; B. support of Open Source, which is available for adoption and updates at any time.《Glossary: If you don't know what a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) is, find out here》

When it comes down to it, GIGABYTE's High Density Servers provide excellent computing performance while maximizing data transfer rates. Not only can they deal with the heavy workloads of a research institute's data center, they are also recommended for other diverse scenarios, such as the computer facilities of small and medium enterprises, deep learning and machine learning, big data analytics and storage, and the construction of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). Because of this, GIGABYTE's High Density Servers are the number one choice for clients from various different sectors.

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