SuperComputing 2017 remains in full force this week from the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. There are lots of activity in presentations, seminars, demonstrations and exhibits on the tradeshow floor.
Stay tuned to the Samtec blog the rest of the week for more highlight.
CCIX Interconnect Standard
FPGA acceleration of high-performance algorithms remains a constant and growing theme in the supercomputing industry and at SC17. Several new approaches to improve the flow of data between computing hosts and FPGA-based accelerators are coming to the market.
A new standard emerging within the industry is the CCIX Consortium. Its mission is to develop and promote adoption of an industry standard specification to enable coherent interconnect technologies between general-purpose processors and acceleration devices for efficient heterogeneous computing.
Several CCIX members are at SC17. Xilinx is demonstrating their CCIX interconnect solutions for packet forwarding between a CCIX capable CPU and a Xilinx CCIX accelerator (VCU118). The demonstration defines a cache coherent interconnect focused on high-performance acceleration applications. It greatly simplifies data movement architecture between host and accelerators
Samtec Orthogonal Backplane Solutions
A side-effect of increased hardware performance in HPC servers, networking, storage and communication equipment is heat dissipation. System designers are constantly researching new approaches in system design to offset these concerns.
Samtec’s new ExaMAX® High-Speed Backplane Connector System with new DMO options given engineers another tool to work with. System designers can now leverage the inherent advantages of direct mate orthogonal architectures when compared with traditional backplane systems.
Samtec’s new ExaMAX® DMO solutions (as demonstrated at SC17) offer system designers flexibility by removing the mid-plane, allowing fabric cards and line cards to mate directly. This fast-growing system architecture increases airflow and improves thermal efficiencies throughout the chassis. DMO solutions enhance signal integrity via shorter trace lengths and less connector transitions while streamlining the system BOM and optimizing system cost.
Samtec’s ExaMAX® DMO system consists of the new EBDM-RA series which mates directly with existing EBTF-RA series. Currently both 6 pair x 10 column and 6 pair x 12 column solutions are available. Guide pin and screw mount options are also available. 6 pair x 6 column and 6 pair x 8 column options are under development.
