AMD Unleashes World's Most Powerful Server GPU for HPC

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 6, 2014) - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the AMD FirePro™ S9150 server card -- the most powerful server Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) ever built for High Performance Computing¹. Based on the AMD Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, the first AMD architecture designed specifically with compute workloads in mind, the AMD FirePro S9150 server card is the first server card to support enhanced double precision and break the 2.0 TFLOPS double precision barrier^1,2. With 16GB of GDDR5 memory -- 33 percent more than the competition³ -- and maximum power consumption of 235 watts, AMD FirePro S9150 server GPUs provide supercomputers with massive compute performance while maximizing available power budgets.

"Today's supercomputers feature an increasing mix of GPUs, CPUs and co-processors to achieve great performance, and many of them are being implemented in an environmentally responsible manner to help reduce power and water consumption," said David Cummings, senior director and general manager, professional graphics, AMD. "Designed for large scale multi-GPU support and unmatched compute performance, AMD FirePro S9150 ushers in a new era of supercomputing. Its memory configuration, compute capabilities and performance per watt are unmatched in its class, and can help take supercomputers to the next level of performance and energy efficiency."

The AMD FirePro S9150 server card is supported by a powerful software ecosystem, enabling developers to better harness its compute performance. In addition to AMD support for OpenCL™, including support for OpenCL™ 2.0 planned later this year⁴, AMD today announced a collaboration with Pathscale to support OpenMP 4.0 for AMD FirePro S9150 and selected other AMD FirePro graphics cards.

"Pathscale's ENZO Compiler with OpenMP 4.0 and support for C, C++, and Fortran is used by customers in the Oil and Gas, Computational Science, Computer Aided Engineering, and other HPC segments," said Christopher Bergstrom, CTO, Pathscale. "Our support for the AMD FirePro S9150 will enable these customers to benefit from the tremendous compute performance of AMD's new server GPU while leveraging their existing investment in OpenMP software."

"Having developed a supercomputer that ranked number two on The Green500 list, it takes exceptional compute performance and efficiency to achieve that status -- we couldn't have done it without AMD FirePro S-Series server GPUs," said Professor Dr. Volker Lindenstruth, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Goethe University, Frankfurt. "We've been putting the AMD FirePro S9150 through its paces and we're blown away by the performance-per-watt. Any supercomputer that leverages massive compute power with the AMD FirePro S9150 and makes a run for the top of the Green500 list stands a very good chance of succeeding."