An AI inference server commercially released by IBM today is already in use as part of an AI supercomputer the US Department of Defense built in a shipping container. Built as part of the Department of Defense (DoD)’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), the new supercomputer is capable of 6 PetaFLOPS. It will be used for both training and inference workloads. It also includes 1.3 Petabytes of solid-state storage.

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Supercomputer in a Shipping Container Redefines ‘Edge’ AI
By Sally Ward-Foxton < https://www.eetimes.com/author/sally-ward-foxton/> 01.29.2020 0
IBM and Nvidia power the DoD’s ‘portable’ system
An AI inference server commercially released by IBM today is already in use as part of an AI supercomputer the US
Department of Defense built in a shipping container.
Built as part of the Department of Defense (DoD)’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), the new
supercomputer is capable of 6 PetaFLOPS. It will be used for both training and inference workloads. It also includes 1.3
Petabytes of solid-state storage.
While this is clearly an example of high performance computing on a large scale, it still falls under the classification “AI at the
edge.” The definition of edge computing requires data to be processed in the same location as it is collected (that is, the data
is not transferred to the cloud to be processed). AI at the edge is often conflated with AI in end devices such as smartphones
and IoT devices; while these examples are examples of AI at the edge, AI at the edge is a much broader spectrum, including
some companies’ own data centers outside the cloud, right up to extreme examples such as this new supercomputer.
The DoD says the new supercomputer in a shipping container is designed to be deployed at the tactical edge, where it can
support militarily significant use-cases that weren’t possible with non-transportable supercomputers. In the short term though,
it will be installed at the US Army Combat Capabilities Developmental Command Army Research Laboratory (ARL) DoD
Supercomputing Resource Center (DSRC) in Maryland.
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< https://www.eetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IBM-Servers-In-A-Shipping-Container.png>
A rendering of the DoD’s AI supercomputer in a shipping container. The setup
includes an uninterruptible power supply, chilled water cooling and fire
suppression systems (Image: US DoD HPCMP)
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The DoD’s supercomputer uses 22 compute nodes for training and 128 for inference, each with GPU acceleration. For
training, it relies on 22 IBM AC922 servers each equipped with six Nvidia V100 GPUs.
The inference portion of this system is based on multiple IBM IC922 servers — a new server product in IBM’s catalog which
is focused on AI inference. These servers feature two Power9 processors (each with 12, 16 or 20 cores) and the DoD has
added six Nvidia T4 GPUs to each for AI inference acceleration. Maximum peak memory bandwidth is 170 GB/s per socket.
The setup also includes an onboard uninterruptible power supply, chilled water cooling and fire suppression systems.
The supercomputer in a shipping container is due to enter production service shortly.
Sally Ward-Foxton
Sally Ward-Foxton covers AI technology and related issues for EETimes.com and all aspects of the
European industry for EETimes Europe magazine. Sally has spent more than 15 years writing about the
electronics industry from London, UK. She has written for Electronic Design, ECN, Electronic Specifier:
Design, Components in Electronics, and many more. She holds a Masters' degree in Electrical and
Electronic Engineering from the University of Cambridge.
< https://www.eetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IBM-Server-IC922-Inference-s.jpg>
IBM’s IC922 server for AI inference can support up to six Nvidia Tesla T4 GPU
accelerators (Image: IBM)