LAS VEGAS, March 19, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Inspur, a member of the OpenPOWER Foundation, showcased its FP5280G2 server based on OpenPOWER9 that has completed the adaptation of mainstream open source software for cloud computing, big data and AI. It was the first time that this product was introduced in North America. As the initiator of the OpenPOWER Foundation, IBM disclosed more details of POWER9 processors: designed for emerging applications such as AI, cloud computing, and big data, and has 50% to 200% performance improvement compared to POWER8.
Completion of Open Source Software Adaptation of Mass-producible OpenPOWER9 Server
Inspur's demo at the OpenPOWER Summit shows the server allows for scalability of 44 processor cores, 2TB DDR4 memory, and 4 GPUs, which can significantly reduce the offline training time of AI systems, and it uses PCI-E4.0 and NVlink2.0 to better solve I/O problems between different GPUs. Compared with the previous generation OpenPOWER8 platform, training time can be reduced by 75%-90% for the training cases based on mainstream frameworks such as TensorFlow and Caffe-MPI.
As an optimized product designed for Internet operators, this product has completed the adaptation and optimization of major AI data such as SPARK, OpenStack, and Hadoop, cloud computing open source software and TensorFlow AI framework, and can be well applied in cloud, big data, and AI application scenarios. Moreover, the product supports 14 PCI-E SSDs, and would be an ideal platform for Internet operators' SQL databases, coupled with the high performance and high reliability of the POWER platforms.
Hu Leijun, VP of Inspur Group, said that this product is ready for mass production and would be commercially available to customers once the OpenPOWER9 processor is officially launched.
OpenPOWER Promoting Smart Computing and Diversified Ecology
Inspur is a major global partner of IBM and has always played an important role in the OpenPOWER ecosystem, but the industrial ecology is the main challenge in developing the OpenPOWER. In September 2017, Inspur and IBM announced the establishment of a joint venture to develop, manufacture, and sell servers based on open Power technology, and the OpenPOWER server will be, among other things, an important product of the joint venture.
Hu Leijun said that customers would have diversified needs in the era of smart computing, which calls for an open and integrated computing industry ecosystem. The OpenPOWER is an open ecology such that its architecture not only has unique advantages in many aspects but can meet customers' differentiated needs. Inspur has been developing and optimizing various solutions to promote the development of the OpenPOWER ecosystem and integration with other technology ecosystems.
In 2017, Inspur officially released a smart computing strategy and proposed an overall strategy for building an open and integrated computing ecosystem. At present, Inspur's computing solutions cover Intel Xeon, Atom, OpenPOWER, and ARM, as well as heterogeneous technologies such as MIC/GPU/FPGA. It is currently one of the vendors of the most complete computing solutions.
Enhancing Inspur's AI Business
Inspur's promotion of the OpenPOWER ecosystem will also enhance its AI business. Inspur's AI training program meets different training needs from small-scale sample training to a multi-billion-sample, trillion-parameter-level model training. In addition, Inspur has developed AIstation and other AI platform software, and an AI platform technology system integrating hardware and software.
POWER9 supports PIC-E4.0, NVlink2.0, and other next-generation I/O protocols faster than other platforms, and it has better performance in AI and other applications. Thanks to the OpenPOWER9 server, Inspur will provide Internet operators with more options to further their AI capabilities.
Inspur - a Leading Server Provider under New Innovation Model
In recent years, Inspur has maintained a rapid growth, ranking first in growth rate and third in sales volume worldwide according to the 2017 global server market report released by Gartner, a global analysis agency.
Inspur's rapid development is due in large part to its unique JDM (joint design manufacturing) model: an application-centric model that centers on product innovation and solution delivery for cloud computing, Internet, and AI applications. It integrates Inspur's and the customer's industrial chain and provides services from development and production to supply and O&M. On this model, Inspur plans to continue and bolster its investment in providing customers with advanced, robust, and diversified computing solutions.
SOURCE Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co., Ltd