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Lenovo launches two new ThinkSystem computing solutions
Thu, 19th Nov 2020
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Lenovo has launched new computing solutions for customers of all sizes looking to better utilise deep analytics and AI for decision making.

The company has launched its Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650-N V2 and ThinkSystem SR670 V2 solutions, which uses Lenovo's Neptune liquid cooling technology and NVIDIA GPUs.

ThinkSystem SD650-N V2

The Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650-N V2 server is the industry's first Direct-to-Node (DTN) liquid-cooled server for NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs, Lenovo states.

It includes four board-mounted NVIDIA A100 GPUs in a 1U system, delivering up to 3PFLOPS of compute performance in a single rack.

Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling reduces energy consumption by up to 40% while maintaining compute power and density, according to the company.

ThinkSystem SR670 V2

To drive compute-intensive workloads, Lenovo has introduced the new Lenovo ThinkSystem SR670 V2, a modular, GPU-rich system that supports up to eight NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs or NVIDIA T4 GPUs in a single 3U frame, delivering up to 160 TFLOPS of compute performance.

Included is a model that leverages Lenovo Neptune liquid-to-air heat exchangers (no need to add plumbing) to cool four board-mounted NVIDIA A100 GPUs.

This gives customers AI performance with the benefit of reduced power consumption and less noise as compared to air cooled systems, Lenovo states.

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology utilises Lenovo

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), a German research university, plans to implement a new 17 PFLOPS system, featuring warm water-cooled NVIDIA A100 Ampere GPUs, with the help of Lenovo and business partner Pro-Com in the coming months.

KIT head of the Department for Scientific Computing and Simulation Dr. Jennifer Buchmller says, “We are looking forward to collaborating with Lenovo for our state-of-the-art HoreKa supercomputer, utilising their award-winning Neptune Direct Water Cooling (DWC) technology.

"The eco-credentials of this solution and the performance optimisation of the overall system is ideally matched with our objective of developing increasingly efficient and sustainable scientific software.

"This in turn enables multi-scale simulations, significantly larger than we've ever done before, for research in the fields of energy and mobility in engineering, material sciences, earth system sciences, life sciences, and particle - astro-particle physics.

Taking advantage of NVIDIA solutions

These new Lenovo servers can also take advantage of the software catalog available from NVIDIA NGC, which includes containerised frameworks, applications, pre-trained models, scripts and Helm charts, all of which are freely downloadable.

Today, the NVIDIA data center platform accelerates over 700 HPC applications.

Lenovo GOAST to power the future

Using the Lenovo GOAST (Genomics Optimisation and Scalability Tool) system configuration, scientists can leverage a validated, pre-configured bioinformatics solution built on high-performance, high-reliability Lenovo ThinkSystem servers.

Traditionally, processing a whole genome (WGS) requires a time scale measured in days, but the Lenovo GOAST (Genomics Optimisation and Scalability Tool) system configuration delivers results in just under an hour using standard x86 hardware, Lenovo states.

University of Delhi post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants, Department of Genetics, Dr. Paritosh Kumar, says “With the Lenovo GOAST system, I can analyse more data and uncover new insights faster.

"Our new HPC environment is powering cutting-edge research that will help us to breed more nutritious, more drought and disease-tolerant, high-yield plants to feed the world."

Delivering workshops to enhance performance

To ensure data centers have the required power and cooling capacity for present and future IT plans, Lenovo Professional Services offers new interactive Data Center Best Practices Workshops.

By partnering with power and cooling experts, Lenovo can help diagnose IT infrastructures through a series of assessments based on customer needs at no charge for customers, resulting in defining proven methodologies to achieve cooling, power and energy efficiency.

Commentary from the leadership team

Lenovo Data Center Group HPC and AI general manager Scott Tease says, “Our intense focus on HPC innovation stems from our commitment to our customers, who are working to save human lives and helping solve some of humanity's greatest challenges.

“As a result, Lenovo has been recognised as the number one TOP500 supercomputer provider, reflecting our commitment to groundbreaking innovation in HPC, analytics and AI for businesses of any size.