SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE:
IBM) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today announced collaboration
on a new deep learning tool optimized for the latest IBM and NVIDIA
technologies to help train computers to think and learn in more
human-like ways at a faster pace.
Deep learning is a fast growing machine learning method that
extracts information by crunching through millions of pieces of
data to detect and rank the most important aspects from the data.
Publicly supported among leading consumer web and mobile
application companies, deep learning is quickly being adopted by
more traditional business enterprises.
Deep learning and other artificial intelligence capabilities are
being used across a wide range of industry sectors; in banking to
advance fraud detection through facial recognition; in automotive
for self-driving automobiles and in retail for fully automated call
centers with computers that can better understand speech and answer
questions.
A new deep learning software toolkit available today called IBM
PowerAI runs on the recently announced IBM server built for
artificial intelligence that features NVIDIA® NVLink™ interconnect
technology optimized for IBM's Power architecture. The
hardware-software solution provides more than 2X performance over
comparable servers with 4 GPUs running AlexNet with
Caffe.1 The same 4-GPU Power-based configuration running
Alexnet with BVLC Caffe can also outperform 8 M40 GPU-based x86
configurations2, making it the world's fastest
commercially available enterprise systems platform on two versions
of a key deep learning framework.
Caffe is a widely-used deep learning framework developed by
Berkeley Vision and Learning Center (BVLC) and is recognized within
the technology industry as one of the most popular deep learning
community applications. Caffe is one of five deep learning software
frameworks available in the IBM PowerAI toolkit. The toolkit
leverages NVIDIA GPUDL libraries including cuDNN, cuBLAS and NCCL
as part of NVIDIA SDKs to deliver multi-GPU acceleration on IBM
servers.
IBM PowerAI is designed to run on IBM's highest performing
server in its OpenPOWER LC lineup, the IBM Power S822LC for High
Performance Computing (HPC), which features NVIDIA NVLink
technology optimized for the Power architecture and NVIDIA's latest
GPU technology. The new solution supports emerging computing
methods of artificial intelligence, particularly deep learning. IBM
PowerAI also provides a continued path for Watson, IBM's cognitive
solutions platform, to extend its artificial intelligence expertise
in the enterprise by using several deep learning methods to train
Watson.
"PowerAI democratizes deep learning and other advanced analytic
technologies by giving enterprise data scientists and research
scientists alike an easy to deploy platform to rapidly advance
their journey on AI," said Ken King,
General Manager, OpenPOWER. "Coupled with our high performance
computing servers built for AI, IBM provides what we believe is the
best platform for enterprises building AI-based software, whether
it's chatbots for customer engagement, or real-time analysis of
social media data."
"Our innovation with IBM on NVIDIA NVLink has created new
opportunities for POWER in the deep learning and analytics market,"
said Ian Buck, VP and GM of
Accelerated Computing Group. "NVIDIA's GPUDL libraries in PowerAI
will provide world class high-performance tools to power
GPU-accelerated deep learning applications."
IBM PowerAI is available immediately at no charge to customers
of IBM's Power S822LC for HPC server. PowerAI is designed to run on
a single S822LC server and also to scale to large scale
supercomputing clusters consisting of dozens, hundreds or thousands
of servers.
The NVLink Advantage
PowerAI is a set of binary distributions of popular deep learning
frameworks including Caffe, Torch and Theano. Additional
distributions include the IBM and NVIDIA versions of the Caffe deep
learning frameworks, IBM-Caffe and NVCaffe. IBM has optimized each
of the distributions to take advantage of the recently announced
IBM POWER8 chip with the NVIDIA NVLink interface featured on the
IBM Power S822LC for HPC server.
The POWER8 with NVIDIA NVLink chip is a technology-leading
processor design that is the result of open collaboration between
OpenPOWER Foundation members IBM and NVIDIA. The new chip enables
tight integration between IBM's POWER8 CPU server architecture and
the new Pascal architecture NVIDIA's Tesla P100 GPU accelerators.
The CPUs and GPUs integrated into the Power S822LC for HPC are
connected to each other via the high-speed NVIDIA NVLink
interconnect. This industry-unique interface between the CPUs and
GPUs, and also between the GPUs, removes potential bottlenecks
created by the PCIe interface found in most Intel x86-based
servers. The PowerAI toolkit of deep learning applications takes
advantage of this new NVLink-based server architecture to optimize
performance of the leading artificial intelligence, deep learning
and machine learning applications.
Growing Momentum for the Power S822LC for High Performance
Computing
The hardware pairing for PowerAI, the IBM Power S822LC for HPC
server, was launched in early September. There was immediate
interest in the server, equipped with raw performance advantages,
among leading research institutions, cloud service providers and
business enterprises. This led to very strong demand in the third
quarter, contributing to Power's 2x year to year growth in Linux
systems revenues.
Initial client uses for the new IBM Power S822LC for HPC servers
include:
- Human Brain Project – In support of the Human Brain
Project, a research project funded by the European Commission to
advance understanding of the human brain, IBM, and NVIDIA deployed
a pilot system at the Juelich Supercomputing Centre as part of the
Pre-Commercial Procurement process. Called JURON, the new
supercomputer leverages Power S822LC for HPC systems.
- Cloud provider Nimbix – HPC cloud platform provider,
Nimbix expanded its cloud supercomputing offerings this month,
putting IBM Power S822LC for HPC systems with PowerAI in the hands
of developers and data scientists to achieve enhanced
performance.
- City of Yachay, Ecuador
– Ecuador's "City of Knowledge,"
Yachay, is a planned city designed to push the nation's economy
away from commodities and towards knowledge-based innovation. Last
week the city announced it is using a cluster of Power S822LC
servers to build the country's first supercomputer for the purpose
of creating new forms of energy, predicting climates, and
pioneering food genomics.
- SC3 Electronics – A leading cloud supercomputing center
in Turkey, SC3 Electronics
announced last month at the OpenPOWER Summit Europe that it is
creating the largest HPC cluster in the Middle East and North Africa region based on Power S822LC for
HPC servers.
To download IBM PowerAI, go to www.ibm.biz/powerai.
To learn more about the IBM Power S822LC for High Performance
Computing server, go to: www.ibm.biz/s822lc-hpc.
To learn more about NVIDIA deep learning, go to
www.nvidia.com/deeplearning.
(1) Based on AlexNet Training for Top-1 50% Accuracy. IBM Power
S822LC for HPC configuration: 16 cores (8 cores/socket) at 4.025
GHz with 4xNvidia Pascal P100 GPUs; 512 GB memory; Ubuntu 16.04.1
running NVCaffe 0.14.5 compared to IBM Power S822L configuration:
20 cores (10 cores/socket) at 3.694 GHz with 4xNvidia M40 GPUs; 512
GB memory; Ubuntu 16.04 running BVLC-Caffe
f28f5ae2f2453f42b5824723efc326a04dd16d85. Software stack details
for both configurations: G++ - 5.3.1, Gfortran –5.3.1, OpenBlas -
0.2.18, Boost –1.58.0, CUDA 8.0 Toolkit, Lapack –3.6.0, Hdf5
–1.8.16, Opencv –2.4.9.
(2) IBM Power S822LC for HPC configuration: 20 cores (10
cores/socket) at 3.95 GHz with 4xNvidia Pascal P100 GPUs; 512 GB
memory; Ubuntu 16.04 LE running IBM version BVLC 1.0.0-rc3 compared
to Intel E5-2640v4 (Broadwell): 20 cores (10 cores/socket) at 3.6
GHz with 8xNvidia M40 GPUs; 512 GB memory; Ubuntu 16.04 LE running
BVLC-Caffe 985493e9ce3e8b61e06c072a16478e6a74e3aa5a. Software stack
details for both configurations: G++ - 5.4, Gfortran .4, OpenBlas -
0.2.19, Boost .58.0, CUDA 8.0 Toolkit, Lapack .6.0, Hdf5 .8.16,
Opencv .4.9
Media Contacts:
Kristin Bryson
IBM Media Relations
203-241-9190
kabryson@us.ibm.com
Jimme' Peters
NVIDIA Public Relations
503.816.0500
jipeters@nvidia.com
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SOURCE IBM