Category Archives: Pitfalls

Common PCI-Express Myths for GPU Computing Users

At Microway we design a lot of GPU computing systems. One of the strengths of GPU-compute is the flexibility PCI-Express bus. Assuming the server has appropriate power and thermals, it enables us to attach GPUs with no special interface modifications. We can … Continue reading

Introduction to RAID for HPC Customers

There is a lot of material available on RAID, describing the technologies, the options, and the pitfalls.  However, there isn’t a great deal on RAID from an HPC perspective.  We’d like to provide an introduction to RAID, clear up a … Continue reading

AVX2 Optimization and Haswell-EP (Xeon E5-2600v3) CPU Features

We’re very excited to be delivering systems with the new Xeon E5-2600v3 and E5-1600v3 CPUs. If you are the type who loves microarchitecture details and compiler optimization, there’s a lot to gain. If you haven’t explored the latest techniques and … Continue reading

PCI-Express Root Complex Confusion?

I’ve had several customers comment to me that it’s difficult to find someone that can speak with them intelligently about PCI-E root complex questions. And yet, it’s of vital importance when considering multi-CPU systems that have various PCI-Express devices (most … Continue reading

Take Care When Updating Your Cluster

Although modern Linux distributions have made it very easy to keep your software packages up-to-date, there are some pitfalls you might encounter when managing your compute cluster. Cluster software packages are usually not managed from the same software repository as … Continue reading