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AMD unveils new EPYC processor for high performance computing

AMD has today launched a new EPYC processor designed for the data center industry, cloud, and enterprise customers.
The AMD EPYC 7003 Series central processing units (CPUs) include up to 64 Zen 3 cores per processor, and also include the EPYC 7763 server processor for a performance and per-core cache memory boost. The 7003 series also includes PCIe 4 connectivity and eight memory channels per processor.

Security features include AMD Infinity Guard and a new feature called Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP). This adds memory integrity protection capabilities to create an isolated execution environment. This can help to prevent hypervisor-based attacks.

According to AMD, cloud providers can leverage the 7003 Series’ high core density, security features, and improved integer performance.
Further, high performance computing (HPC) customers can leverage the 7003 series’ faster time to recovery due to more I/O and memory throughput, and the Zen 3 cores.

For the full article, do take a look at https://itbrief.co.nz/story/amd-unveils-new-epyc-processor-for-high-performance-computing

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Compiling flac-1.3.3 with GNU 6.5

If you are hoping to compile flac-1.3.3 with libogg-1.3.4, do the following

Step 1: Download latest libogg from Xiph.org

Step 2: Untar and Compile the libogg

% tar -zxvf libogg-1.3.4.tar.gz% cd libogg-1.3.4
% ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/libogg-1.3.4
% make && make install

Step 3: Download flac-1.3.3 from https://github.com/xiph/flac

Step 4: Untar and Compile flac-1.3.3 with libogg-1.3.4

% git clone https://github.com/xiph/flac.git
% cd flac
% ./autogen.sh
% ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/flac-1.3.3 --with-ogg-libraries=/usr/local/libogg-1.3.4/lib --with-ogg-includes=/usr/local/libogg-1.3.4/include/

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Configuration Complete =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Configuration summary :

    FLAC version : ............................ 1.3.3

    Host CPU : ................................ x86_64
    Host Vendor : ............................. unknown
    Host OS : ................................. linux-gnu

    Compiler is GCC : ......................... yes
    GCC version : ............................. 4.8.5
    Compiler is Clang : ....................... no
    SSE optimizations : ....................... yes
    Asm optimizations : ....................... yes
    Ogg/FLAC support : ........................ yes
    Stack protector  : ........................ yes
    Fuzzing support (Clang only) : ............ no

% make && make install

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White Paper – MemVerge Software-Defined Memory Data Services Increases VM Density

One validated use case with MemVerge software, is being able to use MySQL instances within the same VM to make full use of all vCPUs. The results suggest that the VM density for this application could be increased by a factor of 4 or even 8 with minimal performance loss……

See “MemVerge Software-Defined Memory Data Services Increases VM Density“

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Error “Too many files open” on CentOS 7

If you are encountering Error messages during login with “Too many open files” and the session gets terminated automatically, it is because the open file limit for a user or system exceeds the default setting and  you may wish to change it

@ System Levels

To see the settings for maximum open files,

# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
55494980

This value means that the maximum number of files all processes running on the system can open. By default this number will automatically vary according to the amount of RAM in the system. As a rough guideline it will be about 100,000 files per GB of RAM.

To override the system wide maximum open files, as edit the /etc/sysctl.conf

# vim /etc/sysctl.conf
 fs.file-max = 80000000

Activate this change to the live system

# sysctl -p

@ User Level

To see the setting for maximum open files for a user

# su - user1
$ ulimit -n
1024

To change the setting, edit the /etc/security/limits.conf

$ vim /etc/security/limits.conf
user - nofile 2048

To change for all users

* - nofile 2048

This set the maximum open files for ALL users to 2048 files. These settings will require the user to relogin

References:

  1. How to correct the error “Too many files open” on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
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INTEL® FPGA PAC can Filter, Aggregate, Sort, and Convert files faster than software alone

This article is taken from DATA PROCESSING TESTS BY NTT DATA SUGGEST THAT AN INTEL® FPGA PAC CAN FILTER, AGGREGATE, SORT, AND CONVERT FILES 4X FASTER THAN SOFTWARE ALONE from Intel

Nearly 80% of total data processing time is spent on tasks such as filtering, aggregation, sorting, and format conversion. NTT Data conducted proof-of-concept tests aimed at improving data processing performance for these tasks. The tests employed an Intel® FPGA Programmable Acceleration Card (Intel® FPGA PAC) to process Linux audit logs, resulting in processing speeds more than four times faster than the same processing done in exclusively in software.

Two factors drove this exercise:

  1. The advent of Intel FPGA PACs and other associated technologies have now made it far easier for companies to incorporate FPGAs as processing elements in data center servers.
  2. HLS technology—which enables engineers to use programming languages with C-like syntaxes for application development targeting FPGAs—makes it easier for software engineers to develop applications that target FPGAs.

For more information, do take a look at DATA PROCESSING TESTS BY NTT DATA SUGGEST THAT AN INTEL® FPGA PAC CAN FILTER, AGGREGATE, SORT, AND CONVERT FILES 4X FASTER THAN SOFTWARE ALONE