E7-8890 v3, can't seem to find a 8 way system

[ranakor]

I'm nearing the completion of a very cpu intensive solution and the E7-8890 v3 seems to be the highest single server solution that ships today (we can't scale out by design and the problem is embarassingly parallelizable).

However after some googling the only systems i've found (hp and dell) that embark it are at most 4 way servers leaving us at half the power. Building our own is fine too but i can't find a motherboard for it either (only thing close on supermicro is an 8 way mobo for 8800 that doesn't specify is it's V3 compatible and says up to 10 core processors so no go).

Now since this processor has been shipping for a while and is 8 way i'm assuming i'm doing something wrong with my Google fu, or is it just not possible to build or buy a 8 way E7-8890 v3 based server / motherboard today?

 

[RU482]

http://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/system/4U/8048/SYS-8048B-TR4FT.cfm

edit...scratch that, that is a 4-CPU board

 

[Phynaz]

Most likely equipment that high up the chain isn't going to be purchasable online from a Dell or HP. You'll need to talk to a rep.

 

[jhu]

1) Why can't you use separate machines instead?

2) Embarrasingly parallel doesn't mean there's no bottleneck somewhere. For example, rendering with Povray yields significant dimishing returns. So having an 8-way system may not bring the benefit you expect.

 

[alyarb]

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/systems/servers/mission-critical/x3950-x6/

 

[ranakor]

1) Why can't you use separate machines instead?

2) Embarrasingly parallel doesn't mean there's no bottleneck somewhere. For example, rendering with Povray yields significant dimishing returns. So having an 8-way system may not bring the benefit you expect.

I'm not talking about running an off the shelf application, i happen to be the one writing the application there and it's made from the start to scale near linearly to many core, it does yield near linear results going from 8 to 80 threads so there's no reason to expect anything different past that line, there aren't any significant diminishing returns here.

Even having a much larger system would be helpful, it just so happens there are "no" larger single systems, i'd be plenty happy if there were 8 way 1000 core per die systems and i'd actually happily use 100% of that

I can't use separate machines because what i do does not fit a scale out model (lot of data, embarassingly parallel tasks and there is no write locking between tasks that are independant in what they write, but not independant across steps nor in the huge amount of shared data they need to read, so even at 2 machines more time would be spent communicating than computing).

 

[ranakor]

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/systems/servers/mission-critical/x3950-x6/#tab-tech_specs

Gives me an http 403 (access denied)

 

[ranakor]

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/systems/servers/mission-critical/x3950-x6/#tab-tech_specs

Googling the product i found this : https://lenovopress.com/tips1132.pdf

However it's for up to 8 xeon E7 8800 V2 not V3

edit : fixed link

 

[zir_blazer]

If I recall correctly, Xeons E7 V3 Haswell-EX were compatible with Ivy Bridge-EX Motherboards, assuming a BIOS upgrade. The difference compared to LGA 1155 and 2011, which required a Socket transition, is that when you drop a Haswell-EX on a previous generation Motherboard, the Motherboard VRMs gets bypasses and the Haswell Integrated Voltage Regulator kicked in.

 

[ranakor]

If I recall correctly, Xeons E7 V3 Haswell-EX were compatible with Ivy Bridge-EX Motherboards, assuming a BIOS upgrade. The difference compared to LGA 1155 and 2011, which required a Socket transition, is that when you drop a Haswell-EX on a previous generation Motherboard, the Motherboard VRMs gets bypasses and the Haswell Integrated Voltage Regulator kicked in.

At the price point this computer would be at i definately want something officially supported (either a pre integrated system, or at least a motherboard that explicitely supports this specific CPU). So while this is good to know it's very much a no go.

Btw any one knows what these CPU go for (is the price noted on ARK close to the truth or do they actually go cheaper?)

 

[Burpo]

Googling the product i found this : https://lenovopress.com/tips1132.pdf

However it's for up to 8 xeon E7 8800 V2 not V3

edit : fixed link

You can get 10 of these for maybe $375 ea , and have a couple spares.. 120 cores for cheap.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-10-I...111098?hash=item33ae36117a:g:zIkAAOSw0HVWFVDr

 

[zir_blazer]

BTW, do you REALLY need a Xeon E7? Most of what makes the Xeons E7 ultra expensive is that it has a ton of RAS features and is intended for mission critical mainframe level systems of such, they don't necessarily perform better than a comparable Xeon E5. If you can find a way to make your application scale in a cluster like fashion (Several systems networked together instead of a single big system), you may be better by purchasing either single Xeons E3/E5 or Dual Xeon E5 and using racks type chassis for them.

 

[ranakor]

BTW, do you REALLY need a Xeon E7? Most of what makes the Xeons E7 ultra expensive is that it has a ton of RAS features and is intended for mission critical mainframe level systems of such, they don't necessarily perform better than a comparable Xeon E5. If you can find a way to make your application scale in a cluster like fashion (Several systems networked together instead of a single big system), you may be better by purchasing either single Xeons E3/E5 or Dual Xeon E5 and using racks type chassis for them.

Nope as i already said i can't scale out in any way, no cluster no nothing, just a single machine with a single non clustered windows server instance with parallelism at the thread level that isn't suitanle to scale to networking.

So at equal performance per cycle my best bet is rhe highest total of sockets * core per socket * core frequency which leaves the 8890 as unbeatable in 8 way in the x86-64 space as fat as i can tell.

I can scale to more cores but i absolutely can NOT scale to more computers

 

[ranakor]

You can get 10 of these for maybe $375 ea , and have a couple spares.. 120 cores for cheap.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-10-I...111098?hash=item33ae36117a:g:zIkAAOSw0HVWFVDr

Price / performance ratio isn't a big concern in this case. Total peformance is the key factor in my scenario (the processor cost is a small amount of the solution cost, so losing half the perf is a no go even if the procs were free as that wouldn't change the total price of the solution "that much" but it would still half the perf).

 

[hrga225]

Nope as i already said i can't scale out in any way, no cluster no nothing, just a single machine with a single non clustered windows server instance with parallelism at the thread level that isn't suitanle to scale to networking.

So at equal performance per cycle my best bet is rhe highest total of sockets * core per socket * core frequency which leaves the 8890 as unbeatable in 8 way in the x86-64 space as fat as i can tell.

I can scale to more cores but i absolutely can NOT scale to more computers

Maybe different approach?GPUs or NICs?(PCIe too limiting?Sunk cost of software?)

 

[NTMBK]

If it's embarassingly parallel, have you considered moving to something like CUDA?

 

[therealnickdanger]

*facepalm*
If y'all actually read the posts:

1. ranakor WROTE the application, he knows what it needs and what it can/can't do
2. he needs as many cores as possible in a single computer
3. he's just looking for help finding mobos/CPUs that will suits his existing needs

 

[imported_ats]

8 socket E7v3: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/integrity-servers/product-detail.html?oid=1008798952#!tab=features

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

If it's embarassingly parallel, have you considered moving to something like CUDA?

Or Xeon Phi? OP you should really look into Xeon Phi.

 

[ranakor]

As the realnickdanger nicely pointed out for me yes i already know what i need, no gpgpu xeon phi scale out or other platform rewrite is a no go!

 

[ranakor]

8 socket E7v3: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/integrity-servers/product-detail.html?oid=1008798952#!tab=features

This actually sounds like exactly what i need! Will contact hp about it. More is welcome if someone finds other integrators or raw parts!

 

[ranakor]

From first contact it seems it starts in the 100K price range, not completely out of reach but definately more than i expected (thinking of buying the parts myself). So it anyone finds a motherboard purchaseable as is for it i'm all ears!

 

[jhu]

Are you a quant? Apparently those guys are using CUDA on Titans.

 

[imported_ats]

This actually sounds like exactly what i need! Will contact hp about it. More is welcome if someone finds other integrators or raw parts!

2 more from lenovo:

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/systems/servers/mission-critical/x3950-x6/#tab-features
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/systems/servers/mission-critical/x880/#tab-features

 

[imported_ats]

From first contact it seems it starts in the 100K price range, not completely out of reach but definately more than i expected (thinking of buying the parts myself). So it anyone finds a motherboard purchaseable as is for it i'm all ears!

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any recent E7 systems outside of T1 vendors that support 8S. Supermicro did do an 8S system for the first gen E7s but don't appear to have a solution for current gen E7s (probably too far outside of their target markets).

Also Oracle makes one as well: https://www.oracle.com/servers/x86/x5-8/features.html