Cluster Hardware

A regular question

from our trainees and customers is: What is the right hardware for Telemac, Paraview, QGIS etc. – And of course, with the best price-performance ratio.
Together with hardware vendors in UK and Germany, we found a couple of very effective solutions.

If new or young used servers, there is no need to stick to the most expensive components. A good scaling efficiency is reached, if the double number of CPU cores results in half the runtime.

After extensive testing for some customers, we offer a Telemac optimized cluster system based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

The hardware is sold via our partner shops in Germany and UK, which provide the related service, while we offer the perfect system configuration to get the maximum performance out of your hardware.

AMD Epyc wins every benchmark

After almost 7 years of stagnation in „per core efficiency“, AMD now offers new CPUs, the AMD Epyc Rome family. These over top the former headliner in the category „cost efficiency“ and performance, the Intel E5 dual socket systems.

The main advantages are:

• Significant higher per core efficiency, what speeds up even small but long running models.
• 16 memory channels on a dual socket board with 3200MHz DDR4 RAM
• Up to 128 cores on a single Mainboard are enough for most of typical Telemac problems: One saves cost and a difficult configuration Odyssey for network equipment like expensive Infiniband adapters and switches. (Compared to former multi node Intel Xeon Clusters).
• Frequent GIS users and Paraview video producers should also have an eye on the AMD Threadripper workstations, which can also be configured and fine tuned with our Cluster software.
• But if it should be a plain cost efficient Telemac number cruncher, we stick on the Epyc 7002 series with > 2.8Ghz base frequency, 16, 24 or 48 cores per CPU and 4 chiplets per CPU.

Intel E5: Still the leader of the budget cluster range

Despite of this, the Xeon E5 multi node systems with Infiniband network are still a very cost efficient choice for occasional Telemac Users.

Example: 64 Core Xeon E5 Cluster Server:  Intel Jefferson Pass with 4 Compute Modules

• each of the 4 moduls equipped with two 8-core Xeon E5-2670 CPUs
• connected with Infiniband
• RAM, SSD and HDD RAID optimized for massive parallel writing

How fast and efficient is it? Try yourself!

If you want to get an impression on how this clusters compare to your own computers, DOWNLOAD the following -> TESTCASE and compare your run times to the diagram below.