Today, although there are more and more companies releasing processors for the HPC market, there are few options for high-performance server-based CPUs. This consists of setbacks and delays at Intel, while also widening the competition for the HPC CPU market.
For its part, AMD has started to find success with its EPYC brand of server CPUs. While it will take time to get to market, the company has started to deliver competitive performance results. In addition, IBM powered the Summit system that holds the top spot on the latest Top500 list. This list features the most powerful supercomputers. While a single deployment is not a strong measure of success, the Summit system has generated a lot of interest, with five of the six Gordon Bell Prize finalists running their applications on the system, which highlights the advantages of the CPU's path, especially when combined with Nvidia. Arm is also ramping up its pace as its partners ramp up production of Arm-based CPU systems for use in HPC deployments.
There are several chip companies trying to establish a foothold in the HPC market, especially in the last ten to twenty years, and it is important to provide a viable technology with a viable ecosystem for the development of hardware and software. Once the above move has been achieved, then Arm will be able to dominate the market. Fujitsu is another high-profile company that is committed to the development of Arm HPC technology. The company is developing its own Arm-based processor for its own computer. The A64FX CPU developed by Fujitsu will be the first processor to have the Scalable Vector extension, which is designed exclusively for supercomputing architectures. In fact, several features are offered, such as broad utility that supports a wide range of applications, massive parallelization via the Tofu interface and low power consumption. As early as August last year, Fujitsu had stated that the processor would be capable of providing double precision floating point over 2.7Tflops.
Of all the companies, AMD seems to be making the most progress in developing server-based CPUs, but it will certainly take some time to design a new processor that meets the demands of modern workloads.
