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AMD's ECMWF Supercomputer Contract Irks INTC & NVDA

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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD - Free Report) is leaving no stone unturned to strengthen presence in the supercomputing market, expected to witness a CAGR of 9.5% between 2020 and 2025, much to the chagrin of Intel (INTC - Free Report) and NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) .

The company recently secured a contract from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

Per the terms of the latest deal, AMD’s EPYC 7742 server processors will be utilized to accelerate ECMWF’s meteorological supercomputer, which is powered by Atos’s advanced BullSequana XH2000 technology.

Markedly, EPYC 7742 processor boasts a core count of 64 with 128 threads, which will boost ECMWF’s computing power, and accelerate both medium and long-range weather forecasting.

Notably, AMD EPYC server processors will enable ECMWF to run weather predictions at a higher resolution, of approximately 10 km.

This will facilitate the supercomputer to deliver reliable data-driven predictions, with improved accuracy regarding timing and intensity of severe weather events.

Robust Features of EPYC to Boost Supercomputing Presence

AMD’s high-performance 2nd Generation EPYC processors have been gaining traction in the supercomputing space of late.

Notably, ECMWF’s meteorological supercomputer, slated to be operational in 2021, is expected to reduce the impact of extreme weather conditions.

Some of the latest EPYC deal wins in supercomputing domain include Frontier supercomputer, ETH Zurich’s Euler VI system and NEC’s Deutscher Wetterdienst.

The robust features are bolstering adoption of EPYC processors and other related offerings, enabling the company to make its mark in 54th edition of TOP500 supercomputers.

In fact, Joliot-Curie supercomputer, developed by Atos and France-based, GENCI, is operational, and ranks 59th in latest TOP500 supercomputers list. It is powered by AMD’s EPYC 7H12 64-core processor.

Other AMD-powered supercomputers featured in the list, include Atos’s Spartan, Pukou Advanced Computing Center’s Sugon TC6000, and German Aerospace Center’s CARA - NEC LX Cluster.

Moreover, AMD is optimistic about extended utilization of its 2nd Gen EPYC processors by Amazon’s (AMZN - Free Report) cloud computing platform, AWS, in upcoming Amazon EC2 (or Elastic Compute Cloud) compute-optimized instances, namely C5a and C5ad.

Further, Microsoft’s (MSFT - Free Report) Azure HBv2 virtual machines are leveraging AMD’s EPYC 7742 processor for HPC applications.
 

We believe deal wins from the industry bellwethers will drive the top line in the days ahead and strengthen financial position in the longer haul.

Intel a Dominating Presence in the Supercomputing Space

Although AMD’s is gaining ground in supercomputing space, Intel dominates the arena. Notably, Intel’s processors have been implemented in 470 of the world’s TOP500 supercomputers.

Particularly, Xeon Scalable CPUs with embedded AI acceleration capabilities are enabled to analyze complex HPC workloads.

Moreover, the chipmaker’s robust complementary solutions, including Optane DC persistent memory, support data-intensive AI and HPC applications.
 

Intel Corporation Price and Consensus

 

Intel Corporation Price and Consensus

Intel Corporation price-consensus-chart | Intel Corporation Quote

Markedly, Intel’s Xeon Scalable platform, the latest Xe architecture-powered GPUs, Optane DC persistent memory and other connectivity technologies are powering the Aurora exascale system at Argonne National Laboratory.

NVIDIA’s Accelerators Deserve a Special Mention

NVIDIA is expanding presence in supercomputing market on strengthening accelerators and latest Tesla V100 GPUs.

The company has recently rolled out “a new kind of” Microsoft Azure-based GPU-accelerated supercomputer. The aim is to democratize the utilization of supercomputer and enable companies to access it robust capabilities according to demand, while reducing infrastructure expenses.

Per the new concept, customers will be able to rent the new AI-driven supercomputer on demand, and instantly access capabilities of deploying large-scale complex high performance computing (HPC) workloads on Azure.

The new supercomputer is based on “800 NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs interconnected on a single Mellanox InfiniBand backend network.”

Markedly, NVIDIA GPUs feature in 136 systems out of 145 TOP500 supercomputers that utilize coprocessor or accelerator technology.
 

Further, acquisition of high-speed interconnects and networking solutions provider, Mellanox, is likely to provide NVIDIA a competitive edge in the domain.

Zacks Rank

NVIDIA currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Both AMD and Intel carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

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