By Jeff Sigua, Product Manager
As the world is on the brink of a tech refresh, scale-out solutions will get a significant boost in both TDP and PCIe transfer speeds. Our CPUs jump from 250w up to 400w in Gen5. Our PCIe lane architecture increases from ~32 GB/s to ~64 GB/s - in each direction. The extra watts will push the boundary of I/O solutions and speeds. Scale out I/O is expanding capacity of new hardware resources instead of increased capacity of old hardware.
Over the past two decades, One Stop Systems has been specializing in cable PCIe expansion using passive PCB routing expertise, or switch architecture, to drive the tech roadmaps into the future. Recently, we have developed PCIe5 Host Interface Boards (HIB) to work up to 2 meters over copper cables and connecting to the latest Gen5 PCIe expansion backplanes or rack mount enclosures.
As next Gen motherboards become available, it seems the common theme among them is fewer native x16 PCIe5 slots coming from the CPU chips. Those extra PCIe5 lanes from the CPU have been routed to internal network or storage options built into the PCIe5 motherboards and connectors. This highlights the importance of using PCIe5 over cable, to allow for more scaled-out array of I/O cards, such as NVIDIA’s H100 GPU and other high data capture card options in development from multiple third-party companies. At the hub of the scale-out will be One Stop Systems' new Gen5 Short Depth Server (SDS). This server appliance can host up to 16x NVMe U.2 storage with removeable drive canister feature + GPU node + PCIe5 cable expansion to our sister product, the 4U Pro or our Centauri storage expansion solution.
We’re seeing full scale-out I/O rack deployments running off One Stop Systems' SDS or EOS server. The SDS or EOS can handle up to 128 end point devices, with the help of custom motherboard BIOS optimized for PCIe enumeration. As we move into PCIe Gen5, the rate of the sensor and data ingestion doubles in speeds talking back to the host server to the scaled out I/O devices. These speeds become a critical path with AI on the Edge and/or machine learning software packet sizes. NVIDIA talks about the increased tensor cores AI benefits here, as it also gets a power bump to 350w TDP per PCIe5 GPU.
Scale-out I/O with Gen5 opens the tech boundaries for our future as a society by doubling its performance. We should see a rapid growth in autonomous cars/trucks/machines and in our infrastructure around use with smart city. Increasing the edge technologies of radar, lidar, 4k/8k camera capture systems with enough processing speeds to get near real time results using machine learning.
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The rugged edge computing landscape is becoming increasingly complex with new generations of technologies, such as the latest AI focused GPUs, releasing annually rather than every 2-3 years. Whether the end application is commercial or defense, rugged edge servers must not only deliver cutting-edge compute performance but also withstand extreme environmental conditions.
When the PCI-SIG formally added support for 675W add-in card devices in the PCI Express Card Electromechanical (CEM) specification in August 2023, NVIDIA’s most powerful CEM GPU, the NVIDIA H100 80GB had a maximum power consumption of 350W. While some devices were starting to push the limits of datacenter thermodynamics – high density systems of many 675W devices seemed like a distant reality. However, with power constraints uncapped and the need for higher performing GPUs skyrocketing, the industry quickly came out with devices taking full advantage of the new specification capability. NVIDIA quickly replaced the H100 80GB with the H100 NVL, increasing power density to 400W. While this small jump was manageable for existing installations, NVIDIA then dove all-in with the H200 NVL released in late 2024 at 600W. The rapid transition from 350W to 600W has put power and cooling technologies in the spotlight in a race to solve this next generation challenge.
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Chana Small
March 03, 2023
Dear onestopsystems.com admin, Your posts are always well-supported by facts and figures.