ACADEMIA

Convey Computer announced a new family of hybrid-core computers -- the HC-2 Series -- that accelerates computing even more than previous Convey systems, providing users with greater performance, functionality, and energy efficiency. Convey shipped the first HC-2 system earlier this month to The Jackson Laboratory (JAX), a leading research laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Convey revolutionized the high-performance computing world in 2008 when it launched the industry's first hybrid-core computer, achieving orders of magnitude increases in application performance. Convey's latest systems, the Convey HC-2 series, accelerate hybrid-core computing even more by providing higher absolute performance, increased functionality, and improved efficiency.

Convey shipped the first HC-2 to JAX, who is using the system for high throughput sequencing in genomics research. "From our initial benchmarks, we anticipate a ten-fold performance improvement in BWA, a key program we use in our research," said Chuck Donnelly, director of Computational Sciences at JAX, referring to the Burrows-Wheeler Aligner. "Faster computing analysis with the Convey system means that we can see results faster -- which helps us fulfill our mission to discover the genetic basis in preventing, treating and curing human disease."

According to Bruce Toal, CEO of Convey, the selection of a Convey HC-2 by JAX illustrates a growing trend in the industry. "We're pleased to see leading research organizations, such as JAX, accelerate their research by complementing their traditional servers with heterogeneous systems. Hybrid-core computing allows our customers to dramatically increase capacity while decreasing power consumption and floor space."

Better Performance The Convey HC-2 systems increase application performance 2-3 times over previous generations of Convey servers and orders of magnitude over commodity servers. Earlier versions of the Convey systems allow the performance-critical portions of applications to achieve significant acceleration on the coprocessor. Convey's latest hybrid-core systems attain even greater acceleration by vastly increasing performance for the entire application -- even those portions not assigned to the coprocessor.

Convey's groundbreaking hybrid-core computing architecture tightly integrates advanced computer architecture and compiler technology with commercial, off-the-shelf hardware -- namely Intel Xeon processors and Xilinx(R) Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The systems help customers dramatically increase performance over industry standard servers while reducing energy costs associated with high-performance computing.

Better Functionality Convey's HC-2 and HC-2ex provide even more flexibility than previous generations of Convey hybrid-core systems. Now available in numerous configurations, customers can better match Convey hybrid-core technology to fit the performance profile of their particular problem. Customers can customize their implementation with a combination of models, Intel processors, memory configurations and I/O devices.

Better Efficiency To offset the rising energy costs in HPC data centers, customers are looking to accelerate applications using energy-efficient computing solutions. Employing application-specific computing (especially FPGAs) for specific algorithms is inherently more efficient than using a general-purpose instruction set.

The Convey HC-2 series builds upon the energy efficiency of previous HC generations and takes it even further. When used as nodes in a HPC cluster, hybrid-core computing can reduce space, power, and cooling requirements up to 90% over racks of commodity servers.