White Papers

Dell HPC Solution Refresh: Intel

Xeon Ivy Bridge-EP, 1866 DDR3

memory and RHEL 6.4

by Calvin Jacob and Ishan Singh

Support for Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge-EP processors, 1866 DDR3 memory and RHEL 6.4 has been added to the current

Dell HPC Solution. This solution is based on Bright Cluster Manager 6.1, with RHEL 6.4 as the base OS supported

on Ivy Bridge processors. BCM is a complete HPC solution from Dell which can automate, deploy and manage an

HPCC. Recommended BIOS settings for the supported platforms, along with BMC/iDRAC settings are scripted and

made available to the user, if he chooses them. Dell system management tools are bundled with Bright Cluster

Manager and used to set, configure and manage Dell hardware.

The highlights of this release are additional support for:

1. Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge-EP (E5-26xx v2) processors.

2. Redhat Enterprise Linux 6.4 (kernel-2.6.32-358.el6.x86_64).

3. Mellanox OFED 2.0-3.

4. CUDA 5.5.

5. PEC Tools for systems management of PE-C servers.

6. Hardware Match Check by BCM.

Ivy Bridge-EP processors

Support for Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge-EP (E5-26xx v2) processors has been added to the refreshed and existing servers:

R620, R720, M620 and C8000 series and C6220II. Intel Ivy bridge-EP processors have Tri-Gate transistors which

use 3-D (non-planar) architecture to package more transistors into less space. These processors have up to 12

cores, 30MB Last-Level Cache (LLC), DDR3 memory with speeds up to 1866 MHz, QPI speeds of 8 GT/s, up to 40

PCIe 3.0 lanes and a TDP up to 130W. The previous generation Intel Xeon Sandy Bridge processors used 32 nm

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Dell HPC Solution Refresh: Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge-EP, 1866 DDR3 memory and RHEL 6.4 by Calvin Jacob and Ishan Singh Support for Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge-EP processors, 1866 DDR3 memory and RHEL 6.4 has been added to the current Dell HPC Solution. This solution is based on Bright Cluster Manager 6.1, with RHEL 6.4 as the base OS supported on Ivy Bridge processors. BCM is a complete HPC solution from Dell which can automate, deploy and manage an HPCC.
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technology, whereas the new Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge-EP are a 22 nm thus delivering higher density and more performance within the same power envelope. Redhat Enterprise Linux 6.4 (kernel-2.6.32-358.el6.x86_64) RHEL 6.4 (kernel 2.6.32-358.el6.x86_64) is the minimum supported Operating System for Intel Ivy Bridge-EP processors. Some of the highlights of RHEL 6.4: 1. Updated Resource Management Capabilities. 2. New Tools and Improved Productivity Support. 3.
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match check can be automated, in case of any mismatch, the cluster admin is notified accordingly. The monitoring sweeping rate on how often the alerts should be visible can be adjusted.