Which processor family is commonly used in HPE Apollo and Cray systems for HPC and AI?

HPE's High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions, specifically the Apollo and Cray system families, are engineered for extreme-scale performance and data-intensive workloads. To meet these demands, they are built using leading server-class processors. The current generations of HPE Apollo and Cray systems predominantly feature architectures based on the Intel Xeon Scalable processor family and the AMD EPYC processor family. This provides customers with a choice of powerful x86-based platforms to optimize for their specific computational, memory bandwidth, and I/O requirements.

B. ARM Cortex A9 is a 32-bit processor core designed for low-power mobile and embedded applications, not high-performance computing.
C. PowerPC G5 is an obsolete processor architecture from the early 2000s and is not used in any modern HPC systems.
D. Intel Atom is a line of low-power processors intended for embedded systems and microservers, lacking the performance needed for demanding HPC and AI workloads.

1. HPE Apollo 2000 Gen10 Plus System QuickSpecs: This official document explicitly lists support for both processor families.

Page 1

"Standard Features" section: "Choice of AMD EPYC™ 7002 and 7003 Series Processors" and "Choice of 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors".

Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

"QuickSpecs HPE Apollo 2000 Gen10 Plus System"

Version 10

January 29

2024.

2. HPE Cray EX Supercomputer Datasheet: This document details the processor options available for the flagship Cray line.

Page 2

"Compute Blade Options" section: Describes blade options including the "HPE Cray EX235a Compute Blade" which features "3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors" and the "HPE Cray EX254n Compute Blade" which features "4th Gen AMD EPYC™ processors". It also notes support for future Intel Xeon processors.

Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

"Datasheet: HPE Cray EX supercomputer"

Document Number: a00097613enw

Published: November 2022.

3. HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10 Plus System QuickSpecs: This document for an AI-focused system confirms the use of high-end Intel processors.

Page 1

"What's New" and "Standard Features" sections: "Support for 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors".

Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

"QuickSpecs HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10 Plus System"

Version 13

January 29

2024.