In this video, Tom Fries, Government Sales Manager at OSS, does a quick walkthrough of the Rigel Edge Supercomputer. Rigel brings the power of NVIDIA® HGX™ A100 SXM GPUs to the rugged edge. The HGX A100 4-GPU backplane delivers 78 teraFLOPS of FP64 HPC performance using third generation NVIDIA NVLink™ technology. The GPUs are integrated with OSS PCIe Gen 4.0 expansion technology to take advantage of the latest AMD 3rd Gen EPYC processors, while offering four PCIe Gen 4.0 x16 expansion slots for high-speed network interconnect, NVMe storage, or FPGA sensor capture. The optimized PCIe architecture enables maximum data throughput, avoiding bandwidth bottlenecks. Rigel’s lightweight, rugged, thermally optimized, and compact design bring the power of the datacenter to the rugged edge—whether airborne, marine, or terrestrial.
This video will highlight some of the most important features of Rigel, and help you determine if this system is the right fit for your AI edge application.
As mentioned in the video, Rigel has many rugged features and was designed specifically for edge applications. Rigel minimizes size by its half rack-width form factor, and weight by its lightweight aluminum construction. Finite element analysis of the design identifies the effects of real-world forces such as vibration, shock, heat, and fluid dynamics. Based on this analysis, the design is optimized by shedding weight while preserving stiffness in key locations to minimize environmental impacts.
Rigel is also designed to be modular. The half rack-width enclosure leaves room for either a second Rigel unit to be slotted into the same vehicle or rack mount -- doubling the system’s AI processing power -- or a companion half-rack enclosure with rugged, removable storage. Key internal components can be upgraded or swapped out as needed. The PCIe 4.0 expansion slots can be used in different ways, such as for very high-speed network interfaces or for direct connection to external storage.
As Tom mentioned, Rigel is a good fit for AI Transportable applications like ISR, autonomous trucks, and mobile command shelters. Rigel supports a wide range of vehicular input power options, such as 48/270 VDC, 110-220 VAC, 3ᴓ 400-800Hz. To meet the thermal requirements of the edge, Rigel uses a custom heat sink design, based on extensive computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis which optimizes the cooling fans’ performance. Strategically placed sheet metal ducting limits airflow bypass.
Rigel also utilizes the newly introduced OSS Unified Baseboard Management Controller (U-BMC). Rigel monitors system telemetry in real-time, providing user monitoring and management through IPMI via graphical or command line interfaces.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and see the full video here. To have a member of our sales team contact you about Rigel, please contact us here.
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Companies today are being asked to do more with data than ever before. Bigger AI models, faster insights, and workloads that don’t stay in one place, it’s a lot to keep up with. Traditional infrastructure just isn’t built for this kind of speed and flexibility.
The answer isn’t about throwing more hardware at the problem. It’s about building smarter, more agile infrastructure that adapts as demands change. And that’s where scale-out and increasingly, a blend of scale-out and scale-up come into play.
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.
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