HPE Expands Direct Liquid-Cooled Supercomputing Solutions, Introduces Two AI Systems for Service Providers and Large Enterprises

Rhea-AI Summary

HPE announces new high-performance computing and AI infrastructure portfolio, including HPE Cray Supercomputing EX solutions and two systems for large language model training. The portfolio features industry's first 100% fanless direct liquid cooling system architecture and includes new compute blades, accelerator blades, interconnect solutions, and storage systems. The HPE ProLiant Compute XD server family introduces two new servers: XD680 with Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerators and XD685 with NVIDIA H200 or Blackwell GPUs, designed for AI training and tuning workloads. Most new products will be available between early 2025 and fall 2025.

Positive

• Introduction of industry's first 100% fanless direct liquid cooling system architecture
• New HPE Cray EX4252 Gen 2 Compute Blade capable of delivering up to 98,304 cores in a single cabinet
• HPE Slingshot interconnect 400 offers twice the line speed over previous generation
• Storage Systems E2000 doubles I/O performance compared to previous generation

Negative

• Most new products won't be available until 2025, indicating delayed market entry
• Significant time gap between announcement and product availability may impact competitive position

Insights

Tech Expert

HPE's expansion into liquid-cooled supercomputing solutions represents a significant technological leap in the AI infrastructure space. The new portfolio introduces groundbreaking features like the 100% fanless direct liquid cooling system and impressive specifications such as up to 98,304 cores in a single cabinet for the EX4252 Gen 2 Compute Blade and support for 224 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs per cabinet in the EX154n Accelerator Blade.

The HPE Slingshot interconnect 400 doubles network speeds to 400 Gbps while the Storage Systems E2000 doubles I/O performance, addressing critical bottlenecks in AI workloads. The introduction of dedicated AI training servers (XD680 and XD685) with support for multiple accelerator options (Intel Gaudi 3, NVIDIA H200, AMD Instinct) positions HPE strategically in the rapidly growing AI infrastructure market.

Market Research Analyst

This product launch strengthens HPE's competitive position in the $40+ billion AI infrastructure market. The timing is particularly strategic as organizations worldwide increase investments in AI computing capabilities. The comprehensive portfolio addressing both traditional HPC and AI workloads, coupled with flexible cooling options and multiple accelerator choices, should help HPE capture market share from both hyperscalers and enterprises building sovereign AI capabilities.

The 2024-2025 release timeline aligns with projected peak demand for AI infrastructure. HPE's full-stack approach, including compute, networking, storage and management software, creates significant revenue opportunities through bundled solutions and services. The focus on energy efficiency through liquid cooling also addresses growing environmental concerns and operating costs.

New portfolio of compute, networking, storage and software advances leadership-class supercomputers and purpose-built AI training solutions

• New products offer choice of air cooling or HPE’s industry-first 100% fanless direct liquid cooling system architecture
• Supercomputing and large-scale AI servers feature next-generation compute and accelerators from AMD, Intel and NVIDIA, which provide customers with options to best suit performance needs and cost requirements
• HPE expands portfolio of servers optimized for high-end AI training and tuning workloads

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Today, 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 optimized 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 realize 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 realize 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 generationⁱ 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 generationⁱⁱ. HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000 is based on the open source Lustre file system and enables better utilization 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 optimize system efficiency, regulate power consumption, and flexibly run diverse workloads on supercomputing infrastructure.

New HPE ProLiant Compute XD server family optimizes 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, customization, 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 authorized personnel with out-of-band remote control access to servers, thereby improving security over standard in-band network access.

• HPE ProLiant Compute XD680 server – Optimized 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 prioritizing 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.

A version of HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 server featuring eight AMD Instinct™ MI325X accelerators and two AMD EPYC™ CPUs was previously announced in October. HPE ProLiant Compute XD servers are part of HPE’s comprehensive AI offerings that include HPE Private Cloud AI and HPE ProLiant Compute DL servers.

As the needs of customers evolve, HPE continues to push the boundaries of innovation by meeting market demands and demonstrating why HPE is sought after to support the growing number of traditional supercomputing customers that are using AI models to enhance scientific discovery. Find HPE solutions on display at SC24 (booth #2219) in Atlanta, November 17-22 for more information on the next-generation of HPC and large-scale AI systems.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) is the global edge-to-cloud company that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. Built on decades of reimagining the future and innovating to advance the way people live and work, HPE delivers unique, open, and intelligent technology solutions as a service. With offerings spanning Cloud Services, Compute, High Performance Computing & AI, Intelligent Edge, Software, and Storage, HPE provides a consistent experience across all clouds and edges, helping customers develop new business models, engage in new ways, and increase operational performance. For more information, visit: www.hpe.com

ⁱ Previous version of HPE Slingshot was capable of 200 gigabits-per-second

ⁱⁱ HPE Cray ClusterStor E1000 is capable of reading data at 85 GB/sec and writing data at 65 GB/sec and HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000 is capable of 190 GB/sec read performance and 140 GB/sec write performance

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241113231172/en/

Cristina Thai

cristina.thai@hpe.com

Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

FAQ

When will the HPE ProLiant Compute XD680 server with Intel Gaudi 3 be available?

The HPE ProLiant Compute XD680 server with Intel Gaudi 3 will be available in December 2024.

What is the core capacity of the new HPE Cray Supercomputing EX4252 Gen 2 Compute Blade?

The HPE Cray Supercomputing EX4252 Gen 2 Compute Blade can deliver up to 98,304 cores in a single cabinet.

How many NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs can the HPE Cray Supercomputing EX154n Accelerator Blade accommodate?

The HPE Cray Supercomputing EX154n Accelerator Blade can accommodate up to 224 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs in a single cabinet.

What is the speed improvement of the new HPE Slingshot interconnect 400?

The HPE Slingshot interconnect 400 delivers twice the line speed compared to the previous generation.