AMD Launches Instinct MI100 GPU for HPC and AI 

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 16, 2020 -- AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced the new AMD Instinct MI100 accelerator – the world’s fastest HPC GPU and the first x86 server GPU to surpass the 10 teraflops (FP64) performance barrier. Supported by new accelerated compute platforms from Dell, Gigabyte, HPE, and Supermicro, the MI100, combined with AMD EPYC CPUs and the ROCm 4.0 open software platform, is designed to propel new discoveries ahead of the exascale era.

Built on the new AMD CDNA architecture, the AMD Instinct MI100 GPU enables a new class of accelerated systems for HPC and AI when paired with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. The MI100 offers up to 11.5 TFLOPS of peak FP64 performance for HPC and up to 46.1 TFLOPS peak FP32 Matrix performance for AI and machine learning workloads. With new AMD Matrix Core technology, the MI100 also delivers a nearly 7x boost in FP16 theoretical peak floating point performance for AI training workloads compared to AMD’s prior generation accelerators.

“Today AMD takes a major step forward in the journey toward exascale computing as we unveil the AMD Instinct MI100 – the world’s fastest HPC GPU,” said Brad McCredie, corporate vice president, Data Center GPU and Accelerated Processing, AMD. “Squarely targeted toward the workloads that matter in scientific computing, our latest accelerator, when combined with the AMD ROCm open software platform, is designed to provide scientists and researchers a superior foundation for their work in HPC.”

Open Software Platform for the Exascale Era

The AMD ROCm developer software provides the foundation for exascale computing. As an open source toolset consisting of compilers, programming APIs and libraries, ROCm is used by exascale software developers to create high performance applications. ROCm 4.0 has been optimized to deliver performance at scale for MI100-based systems. ROCm 4.0 has upgraded the compiler to be open source and unified to support both OpenMP 5.0 and HIP. PyTorch and Tensorflow frameworks, which have been optimized with ROCm 4.0, can now achieve higher performance with MI100. ROCm 4.0 is the latest offering for HPC, ML and AI application developers which allows them to create performance portable software.

“We’ve received early access to the MI100 accelerator, and the preliminary results are very encouraging. We’ve typically seen significant performance boosts, up to 2-3x compared to other GPUs,” said Bronson Messer, director of science, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. “What’s also important to recognize is the impact software has on performance. The fact that the ROCm open software platform and HIP developer tool are open source and work on a variety of platforms, it is something that we have been absolutely almost obsessed with since we fielded the very first hybrid CPU/GPU system.”

Key capabilities and features of the AMD Instinct MI100 accelerator include:

• All-New AMD CDNA Architecture- Engineered to power AMD GPUs for the exascale era and at the heart of the MI100 accelerator, the AMD CDNA architecture offers exceptional performance and power efficiency
• Leading FP64 and FP32 Performance for HPC Workloads - Delivers industry leading 11.5 TFLOPS peak FP64 performance and 23.1 TFLOPS peak FP32 performance, enabling scientists and researchers across the globe to accelerate discoveries in industries including life sciences, energy, finance, academics, government, defense and more
• All-New Matrix Core Technology for HPC and AI – Supercharged performance for a full range of single and mixed precision matrix operations, such as FP32, FP16, bFloat16, Int8 and Int4, engineered to boost the convergence of HPC and AI.
• 2nd Gen AMD Infinity Fabric Technology – Instinct MI100 provides ~2x the peer-to-peer (P2P) peak I/O bandwidth over PCIe 4.0 with up to 340 GB/s of aggregate bandwidth per card with three AMD Infinity Fabric Links. In a server, MI100 GPUs can be configured with up to two fully-connected quad GPU hives, each providing up to 552 GB/s of P2P I/O bandwidth for fast data sharing.
• Ultra-Fast HBM2 Memory– Features 32GB High-bandwidth HBM2 memory at a clock rate of 1.2 GHz and delivers an ultra-high 1.23 TB/s of memory bandwidth to support large data sets and help eliminate bottlenecks in moving data in and out of memory.
• Support for Industry's Latest PCIe Gen 4.0 – Designed with the latest PCIe Gen 4.0 technology support providing up to 64GB/s peak theoretical transport data bandwidth from CPU to GPU.

Available Server Solutions
The AMD Instinct MI100 accelerators are expected by end of the year in systems from major OEM and ODM partners in the enterprise markets, including:

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

“Customers use HPE Apollo systems for purpose-built capabilities and performance to tackle a range of complex, data-intensive workloads across high-performance computing (HPC), deep learning and analytics,” said Bill Mannel, vice president and general manager, HPC at HPE. “With the introduction of the new HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10 Plus system, we are further advancing our portfolio to improve workload performance by supporting the new AMD Instinct MI100 accelerator, which enables greater connectivity and data processing, alongside the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with AMD to expand our offerings with its latest CPUs and accelerators.”

Supermicro

“We’re excited that AMD is making a big impact in high-performance computing with AMD Instinct MI100 GPU accelerators,” said Vik Malyala, senior vice president, field application engineering and business development, Supermicro. “With the combination of the compute power gained with the new CDNA architecture, along with the high memory and GPU peer-to-peer bandwidth the MI100 brings, our customers will get access to great solutions that will meet their accelerated compute requirements and critical enterprise workloads. The AMD Instinct MI100 will be a great addition for our multi-GPU servers and our extensive portfolio of high-performance systems and server building block solutions.”

MI100 Specifications

About AMD

For more than 50 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies ― the building blocks for gaming, immersive platforms and the data center. Hundreds of millions of consumers, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research facilities around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees around the world are focused on building great products that push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) website.

Source: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.