No one thought an x86 processor and a GPU could fit into a single blade. This is where our discussion with Franck Darmon, Carri Systems’ CEO, initially came from, as his belief and determination made it a reality. With a very pragmatic approach, Carri Systems went to the GPU Technology Conference to demonstrate not only the concept but a working (and very efficient) machine.

The 2U server (codenamed HighServer XLR4) includes four blades, each containing a latest generation NVIDIA GPU accelerator and aa quad-core Intel Xeon E3 Haswell v3 CPU which, although less powerful than E5 or E7 counterparts, produces less heat and thus consumes much less power (1700 W Maxi for the entire server). With two DDR3 memory modules per blade, this original configuration makes the HighServer a small but real supercomputer in itself. Interconnected in Ethernet only for the time being, the system targets computations running on one blade rather than distributed workloads, but Carri Systems is already in the process of developing an InfiniBand version, which should be a hit in Europe.