Revision as of 01:55, 2 November 2017

ZettaScaler is a series of Japanese supercomputers using processors designed by PEZY and liquid cooling systems designed by ExaScaler.

Overview

ZettaScaler supercomputers are constructed using dense server aggregates called 'Bricks'. The system is cooled using enclosures containing a number of bricks. The cooling system is designed by ExaScaler and makes use of 3M's Fluorinert Electronic liquid which is an electrically insulating fluorocarbon-based inert liquid.

ZettaScalers use a host CPU (typically a Xeon E5) which is then used to offload work to the PEZY-SCx processors which act as GPDSP/GPGPU accelerators using OpenCL-like programming called PZCL.

ZettaScaler-1.x

ZettaScaler-1.x (ZS-1.x) is based on the PEZY-SC. Each node (brick) was constructed using two Xeon E5 connected using Intel's QPI along with 4 set of dual PEZY-SC chips in PCIe card slots using InfiniBand FDR HCA. The use of the general-purpose Intel chips was to reduce cost and speedup development cycle. The original ZS-1.0 used an off-the-shelf SuperMicro board in order to speed-up the development cycle. Starting with the ZS-1.4, PEZY moved to a custom "brick".

With the introduction of the ZS-1.6, PEZY redesigned the package of the PEZY-SC. The new chip, PEZY-SCnp (NP for New Package), addressed a number of issues relating to signal quality (DRAM, and PCIe frequency failure).

ZettaScaler-2.x

With the introduction of the ZettaScaler-2.x, PEZY has redesigned the Brick. PEZY moved to an advanced 3D packaging technology using ThruChip Interface (TCI) to interconnect the DRAM to the processor which uses wireless near-field inductive coupling instead of the traditional TSV.

References

• Some information was obtained directly from PEZY
• 3M Fluorinert Helps PEZY/ExaScaler Rise to the Top of the Green500 List