HPE expands direct liquid-cooled supercomputing solutions, introduces two AI systems for service providers and large enterprises

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) announces its new high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure portfolio that includes leadership-class HPE Cray Supercomputing EX solutions and two systems optimised for large language model (LLM) training, natural language processing (NLP) and multi-modal model training. The new supercomputing solutions are designed to help global customers fast-track scientific research and invention.

“Service providers and nations investing in sovereign AI initiatives are increasingly turning to high-performance computing as the critical backbone enabling large-scale AI training that accelerates discovery and innovation,” said Trish Damkroger, senior vice president and general manager, HPC & AI Infrastructure Solutions at HPE. “Our customers turn to us to fast-track their AI system deployment to realise value faster and more efficiently by leveraging our world-leading HPC solutions and decades of experience in delivering, deploying and servicing fully-integrated systems.”

End-to-end portfolio of industry-leading HPC solutions: HPE Cray Supercomputing EX

HPE leads the way providing some of the fastest and most energy efficient supercomputers in the world. Based on HPE Cray Supercomputing EX systems, HPE’s net-new offerings for its entire leadership-class HPC portfolio are designed for research institutions entrusted with solving the world’s biggest problems and government entities developing sovereign AI initiatives. The portfolio is based on the industry’s first 100% fanless direct liquid cooling system architecture and spans every layer of HPE’s supercomputing solutions including compute nodes, networking and storage, which are supplemented by a new software offering.

• HPE Cray Supercomputing EX4252 Gen 2 Compute Blade – Capable of delivering up to 98,304 cores in a single cabinet, the HPE Cray Supercomputing EX4252 Gen 2 Compute Blade delivers the most powerful one-rack unit system available for supercomputing. Featuring eight 5^th Gen AMD EPYC processors, this compute blade offers the benefit of CPU density, allowing customers to realise higher-performing compute within the same space. HPE Cray Supercomputing EX4252 Gen 2 Compute Blade will be available Spring 2025.

• HPE Cray Supercomputing EX154n Accelerator Blade – To drastically reduce the time it takes to complete a supercomputing workload, the HPE Cray Supercomputing EX154n Accelerator Blade can accommodate up to 224 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs in a single cabinet. Featuring the NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell NVL4 Superchip, each accelerator blade holds four NVIDIA NVLink-connected Blackwell GPUs unified with two NVIDIA Grace CPUs over NVIDIA NVLink-C2C. General availability for HPE Cray Supercomputing EX154n Accelerator Blade is expected by the end of 2025.

• HPE Slingshot interconnect 400 – The next generation of HPE’s exascale-capable interconnect portfolio offers network interface controllers (NICs), cables and switches at 400 gigabit-per-second speeds. HPE Slingshot interconnect 400 delivers twice the line speed over the previous generation while offering features like automated congestion management and adaptive routing for ultra-low tail latency, allowing customers to run large workloads with significantly less network infrastructure. This version of HPE Slingshot will be available for clusters based on HPE Cray Supercomputing EX systems beginning Fall 2025.

• HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000 – This high-performance storage system designed for large-scale supercomputers more than doubles the input/output (I/O) performance compared to the previous generation. HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000 is based on the opensource Lustre file system and enables better utilisation of both CPU and GPU-based compute nodes by reducing idle time during I/O operations. The HPC storage system will become generally available on HPE Cray Supercomputing EX systems in early 2025.

• HPE Cray Supercomputing User Services Software – HPE is introducing a new software offering that improves the user experience of running compute-intensive workloads. Available now, HPE Cray Supercomputing User Services Software includes features that help customers optimise system efficiency, regulate power consumption, and flexibly run diverse workloads on supercomputing infrastructure.

New HPE ProLiant Compute XD server family optimises for AI model training and tuning

HPE continues the rollout of a new category of servers that enables customers to streamline deployment of large, highly-performant AI clusters. Designed for service providers and large enterprises training their own AI models, HPE ProLiant Compute XD servers leverage the company’s expertise in installing and deploying large AI systems. Optional HPE Services are available to support building, customisation, integration, validation, and full testing of the solution within HPE’s state-of-the-art manufacturing facility to expedite on-site deployment.

Only available on HPE ProLiant Compute servers, HPE Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) management technology enables select authorised personnel with out-of-band remote control access to servers, thereby improving security over standard in-band network access.

• HPE ProLiant Compute XD680 server – Optimised with price-for-performance in mind, the air-cooled HPE ProLiant Compute XD680 server is designed to address demanding AI training, tuning and inferencing workloads. An HPE-designed chassis houses eight Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerators in a single compact node. HPE ProLiant Compute XD680 server with Intel Gaudi 3 will be available in December 2024.

• HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 server – For customers prioritising performance, competitive advantage and energy efficiency, a new version of the HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 server will become available with NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate training for large, complex AI models. The server is powered by eight NVIDIA H200 SXM Tensor Core GPUs or NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs in a five rack-unit chassis and leverages HPE’s multi-decades expertise in liquid cooling to efficiently cool GPUs, CPUs and switches. The NVIDIA HGX H200 8-GPU version of HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 server will become available in early 2025 and HPE will be time-to-market with NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs.