This put up was co-authored by Jyothi Venkatesh, Senior Product Manager, Azure HPC and Fanny Ou, Technical Program Manager, Azure HPC.
The subsequent technology of purpose-built Azure HPC digital machines
Today, we’re excited to announce two new digital machines (VMs) that ship extra efficiency, value-adding innovation, and cost-effectiveness to each Azure HPC buyer. The all-new HX-series and HBv4-series VMs are coming quickly to the East US area, and thereafter to the South Central US, West US3, and West Europe areas. These new VMs are optimized for a wide range of HPC workloads comparable to computational fluid dynamics (CFD), finite ingredient evaluation, frontend and backend digital design automation (EDA), rendering, molecular dynamics, computational geoscience, climate simulation, AI inference, and monetary threat evaluation.
Innovative applied sciences to assist HPC prospects the place it issues most
HX and HBv4 VMs are full of new and progressive applied sciences that maximize efficiency and reduce complete HPC spend, together with:
- 4th Gen AMD EPYC™ processors (Preview, This fall 2022).
- Upcoming AMD EPYC processors, codenamed “Genoa-X,” (with basic availability in 1H 2023).
- 800 GB/s of DDR5 reminiscence bandwidth (STREAM TRIAD).
- 400 Gb/s NVIDIA Quantum-2 CX7 InfiniBand, the primary on the general public cloud.
- 80 Gb/s Azure Accelerated Networking.
- PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSDs delivering 12 GB/s (learn) and seven GB/s (write) of storage bandwidth.
Below are preliminary benchmarks from the preview of HBv4 and HX collection VMs utilizing 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors throughout a number of frequent HPC functions and domains. For comparability, efficiency data can also be included from Azure’s most up-to-date H-series (HBv3-series with Milan-X processors), in addition to a 4-year-old HPC-optimized server generally discovered in lots of on-premises datacenters (represented right here by Azure HC-series with Skylake processors).
Figure 1: Performance comparability of HBv4/HX-series in Preview to HBv3-series and four-year-old server expertise in an HPC-optimized configuration throughout numerous workloads and scientific domains.
Learn extra concerning the efficiency of HBv4 and HX-series VMs with 4th Gen EPYC CPUs.
HBv4-series brings efficiency leaps throughout a various set of HPC workloads
Azure HBv3 VMs with third Gen AMD EPYC™ processors with AMD 3D V-cache™ Technology already ship spectacular ranges of HPC efficiency, scaling MPI workloads as much as 27x greater than different clouds, surpassing lots of the main supercomputers on this planet, and providing the disruptive worth proposition of sooner time to answer with decrease complete value. Unsurprisingly, the response from prospects and companions has been phenomenal. With the introduction of HBv4 collection VMs, Azure is elevating the bar but once more—this time throughout an excellent better range of reminiscence performance-bound, compute-bound, and massively parallel workloads.
|
VM Size |
Physical CPU Cores |
RAM (GB) |
Memory Bandwidth (STREAM TRIAD) (GB/s) |
L3 Cache/VM (MB) |
FP64 Compute (TFLOPS) |
InfiniBand RDMA Networokay (Gbps) |
|
Standard_HB176rs_v4 |
176 |
688 |
800 |
768 MB |
6 |
400 |
|
Standard_HB176-144rs_v4 |
144 |
688 |
800 |
768 MB |
6 |
400 |
|
Standard_HB176-96rs_v4 |
96 |
688 |
800 |
768 MB |
6 |
400 |
|
Standard_HB176-48rs_v4 |
48 |
688 |
800 |
768 MB |
6 |
400 |
|
Standard_HB176-24rs_v4 |
24 |
688 |
800 |
768 MB |
6 |
400 |
Notes: 1) “r” denotes help for distant direct reminiscence entry (RDMA) and “s” denotes help for Premium SSD disks. 2) At General Availability, Azure HBv4 VMs will likely be upgraded to Genao-X processors that includes 3D V-cache. Updated technical specs for HBv4 will likely be posted at the moment.
HX-series powers subsequent technology silicon design
In Azure, we attempt to ship the very best platform for silicon design, each now and much into the longer term. Azure HBv3 VMs, that includes third Gen AMD EPYC processors with AMD 3D V-cache Technology, are a big step towards this goal, providing the very best efficiency and complete value effectiveness within the public cloud for small and medium reminiscence EDA workloads. With the introduction of HX-series VMs, Azure is enhancing its differentiation with a VM purpose-built for even bigger fashions turning into commonplace amongst chip designers concentrating on 3, 4, and 5 nanometer processes.
HX VMs will function 3x extra RAM than any prior H-series VM, as much as practically 60 GB of RAM per core, and constrained cores VM sizes to assist silicon design prospects maximize ROI of their per-core business licensing investments.
|
VM Size |
Physical CPU Cores |
RAM (GB) |
Memory/Core(GB) |
L3 Cache/VM (MB) |
Local SSD NVMe (TB) |
InfiniBand RDMA Network (Gbps) |
|
Standard_HX176rs |
176 |
1,408 |
8 |
768 |
3.6 TB |
400 |
|
Standard_HX176-144rs |
144 |
1,408 |
10 |
768 |
3.6 TB |
400 |
|
Standard_HX176-96rs |
96 |
1,408 |
15 |
768 |
3.6 TB |
400 |
|
Standard_HX176-48rs |
48 |
1,408 |
29 |
768 |
3.6 TB |
400 |
|
Standard_HX176-24rs |
24 |
1,408 |
59 |
768 |
3.6 TB |
400 |
Notes: 1) “r” denotes help for distant direct reminiscence entry (RDMA) and “s” denotes help for Premium SSD disks. 2) At General Availability, Azure HBv4 VMs will likely be upgraded to Genoa-X processors that includes 3D V-cache. Updated technical specs for HBv4 will likely be posted at the moment.
400 Gigabit InfiniBand for supercomputing prospects
HBv4 and HX VMs are Azure’s first to leverage 400 Gigabit NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand. This latest technology of InfiniBand brings better help for the offload of MPI collectives, enhanced congestion management, and enhanced adaptive routing capabilities. Using the brand new HBv4 or HX-series VMs and solely a normal Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS), prospects can scale CPU-based MPI workloads past 50,000 cores per job.
Continuous enchancment for Azure HPC prospects
Microsoft and AMD share a imaginative and prescient for a brand new period of high-performance computing within the cloud: one outlined by fixed enhancements to the crucial analysis and enterprise workloads that matter most to our prospects. Azure continues to collaborate with AMD to make this imaginative and prescient a actuality by elevating the bar on the efficiency, scalability, and worth we ship with each launch of Azure H-series VMs.
Figure 2: Azure HPC Performance 2019 by 2022.
Learn extra concerning the efficiency of HBv4 and HX-series VMs with 4th Gen EPYC CPUs.
Customer and associate momentum
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“We’re happy to see Altair® AcuSolve®’s spectacular linear scale-up on the HBv3 situations, displaying as much as 2.5 instances speedup. Performance will increase 12.83 instances with an 8-node (512-core) configuration on third AMD EPYC™ processors, a wonderful scale-up worth for AcuSolve in comparison with the earlier technology delivering superior value efficiency. We welcome the addition of the brand new Azure HBv4 and HX-series digital machines and sit up for pairing them with Altair software program to the good thing about our joint prospects.” —Dr. David Curry, Senior Vice President, CFD and EDEM |
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“Customers within the HPC trade proceed to demand greater efficiency and optimizations to run their most mission-critical and data-intensive functions. 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors present breakthrough efficiency for HPC within the cloud, delivering spectacular time to outcomes for patrons adopting Azure HX-series and HBv4-series VMs.” —Lynn Comp, Corporate Vice President, Cloud Business, AMD |
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“Ansys electronics, semiconductor, fluids, and constructions prospects demand extra throughput out of their simulation instruments to beat challenges posed by product complexity and challenge timelines. Microsoft’s HBv3 digital machines, that includes AMD’s third Gen EPYC processors with 3D V-Cache, have been giving firms an awesome value/efficiency crossover level to help these multiphysics simulations on-demand and with little or no IT overhead. We sit up for leveraging Azure’s subsequent technology of HPC VMs that includes 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors, the HX and HBv4 collection, to allow even better simulation complexity and pace to assist engineers scale back threat and meet time-to-market deadlines.” —John Lee, Vice President and General Manager, Electronics and Semiconductor, Ansys |
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“We’ve helped hundreds of consumers mix the efficiency and scalability of the cloud, offering ease-of-use and occasion entry to our highly effective computational software program, which speeds the supply of progressive designs. The two new high-performance computing digital machines powered by the AMD Genoa processor on Microsoft Azure can present our mutual prospects with optimum efficiency as they sort out the ever-increasing calls for of compute and reminiscence capability for gigascale, advanced-node designs.” —Mahesh Turaga, Vice President, Cloud Business Development, Cadence |
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“Hexagon simulation software program powers a number of the most superior engineering on this planet. We’re proud to associate with Microsoft, and excited to pair our software program with Azure’s new HBv4 digital machines. During early testing in collaboration with the Azure HPC workforce, we’ve seen a generational efficiency speedups of 400 % when evaluating structural simulations working on HBv3 and HX-series VMs. We sit up for seeing what our joint prospects will do with this outstanding mixture of software program and {hardware} to advance their analysis and productiveness, now and tomorrow. In the primary quarter of 2023, we will likely be benchmarking heavy industrial CFD computations, leveraging a number of HBv4 digital machines related by InfiniBand.” —Bruce Engelmann, CTO, Hexagon |
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“Microsoft Azure has as soon as once more raised the bar for HPC infrastructure platform within the cloud this time with the launch of Azure HBv4 and HX digital machines primarily based on AMD’s 4th gen EPYC Genoa CPUs. We expect a robust buyer demand for HBv4 and are excited to supply it to our prospects that want to run CFD, EDA, or different forms of HPC workloads within the cloud. —Mulyanto Poort, Vice President of HPC Engineering at Rescale |
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“Early testing by AMD with Siemens EDA workloads confirmed 15 % to 22 % enhancements in runtimes with Microsoft Azure’s new AMD-based digital machines in comparison with the earlier technology. Semiconductor chip designers face a variety of technical challenges that make hitting launch dates extraordinarily tough. The mixed innovation of AMD, Microsoft Azure, and Siemens offers a simplified path to schedule predictability by the elevated efficiency doable with the newest choices.” —Craig Johnson, Vice President, Siemens, EDA Cloud Solutions |
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“Customer adoption of the cloud for chip improvement is accelerating, pushed by complexity and time-to-market benefits. The shut collaboration between Synopsys and Microsoft brings collectively EDA and optimized compute to allow prospects to scale underneath the Synopsys FlexEDA pay-per-use mannequin. Verification represents a big EDA workload in right now’s complicated SoCs and with the discharge of AMD’s next-generation EPYC processor accessible on Microsoft Azure, prospects can make the most of the optimized cache utilization and NUMA-aware reminiscence structure strategies to attain as much as 2x verification throughput over earlier generations.” —Sandeep Mehndiratta, Vice President of Cloud at Synopsys |
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