Azure NetApp Information: Revolutionizing silicon design for high-performance computing

Find out how the Azure {Hardware} Methods and Interconnect group leverages Azure NetApp Information for chip growth.

Excessive-performance computing (HPC) workloads place vital calls for on cloud infrastructure, requiring sturdy and scalable sources to deal with advanced and intensive computational duties. These workloads usually necessitate excessive ranges of parallel processing energy, sometimes offered by clusters of central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU)-based digital machines. Moreover, HPC functions demand substantial information storage and quick entry speeds, which exceed the capabilities of conventional cloud file programs. Specialised storage options are required to satisfy the low latency and excessive throughput enter/output (I/O) wants.

Microsoft Azure NetApp Information is designed to ship low latency, excessive efficiency, and enterprise-grade information administration at scale. Distinctive capabilities of Azure NetApp Information make it appropriate for a number of high-performance computing workloads akin to Digital Design Automation (EDA), Seismic Processing, Reservoir Simulations, and Threat Modeling. This weblog highlights Azure NetApp Information’ differentiated capabilities for EDA workloads and Microsoft’s silicon design journey. 

Infrastructure necessities of EDA workloads

EDA workloads have intensive computational and information processing necessities to handle advanced duties in simulation, bodily design, and verification. Every design stage includes a number of simulations to reinforce accuracy, enhance reliability, and detect design defects early, decreasing debugging and redesigning prices. Silicon growth engineers can use further simulations to check completely different design eventualities and optimize the chip’s Energy, Efficiency, and Space (PPA).

EDA workloads are labeled into two main sorts—Frontend and Backend, every with distinct necessities for the underlying storage and compute infrastructure. Frontend workloads deal with logic design and purposeful features of chip design and encompass hundreds of short-duration parallel jobs with an I/O sample characterised by frequent random reads and writes throughout thousands and thousands of small information. Backend workloads deal with translating logic design to bodily design for manufacturing and consists of lots of of jobs involving sequential learn/write of fewer bigger information.

The selection of a storage resolution to satisfy this distinctive mixture of frontend and backend workload patterns is non-trivial. The SPEC consortium has established the SPEC SFS benchmark to assist with benchmarking the varied storage options within the business. For EDA workloads, the EDA_BLENDED benchmark supplies the attribute patterns of the frontend and backend workloads. The I/O operations composition is described within the following desk.

Azure NetApp Information helps common volumes which are perfect for workloads like databases and general-purpose file programs. EDA workloads work on giant volumes of knowledge and require very excessive throughput; this requires a number of common volumes. The introduction of huge volumes to help increased portions of knowledge is advantageous for EDA workloads, because it simplifies information administration and delivers superior efficiency in comparison with a number of common volumes. 

Beneath is the output from the efficiency testing of the SPEC SFS EDA_BLENDED benchmark which demonstrates that Azure NetApp Information can ship ~10 GiB/s throughput with lower than 2 ms latency utilizing giant volumes.

Digital Design Automation at Microsoft

Microsoft is dedicated to enabling AI on each workload and expertise for gadgets of at this time and tomorrow. It begins with the design and manufacturing of silicon. Microsoft is surpassing scientific boundaries at an unprecedented tempo for working EDA workflows, pushing the bounds of Moore’s Regulation by adopting Azure for our personal chip design wants.

Utilizing the most effective practices mannequin to optimize Azure for chip design between prospects, companions, and suppliers has been essential to the event of a few of Microsoft’s first absolutely customized cloud silicon chips: 

• The Azure Maia 100 AI Accelerator, optimized for AI duties and generative AI. 
• The Azure Cobalt 100 CPU, an Arm-based processor tailor-made to run basic function compute workloads on Microsoft Azure.
• The Azure Built-in {Hardware} Safety Module; Microsoft’s latest in-house safety chip designed to harden key administration.
• The Azure Enhance DPU, the corporate’s first in-house information processing unit designed for data-centric workloads with excessive effectivity and low energy. 

The chips developed by the Azure cloud {hardware} group are deployed in Azure servers delivering best-in-class compute capabilities for HPC workloads and additional speed up the tempo of innovation, reliability, and operational effectivity used to develop Azure’s manufacturing programs. By adopting Azure for EDA, the Azure cloud {hardware} group enjoys these advantages: 

• Speedy entry to scalable on-demand innovative processors.
• Dynamic pairing of every EDA software to a particular CPU structure. 
• Leveraging Microsoft’s improvements in AI-driven applied sciences for semiconductor workflows. 

How Azure NetApp Information accelerates semiconductor growth innovation 

• Superior efficiency: Azure NetApp Information can ship as much as 652,260 IOPS with lower than 2 milliseconds of latency, whereas reaching 826,000 IOPS on the efficiency edge (~7 milliseconds of latency).
• Excessive scalability: As EDA tasks advance, information generated can develop exponentially. Azure NetApp Information supplies large-capacity, excessive efficiency single namespaces with giant volumes as much as 2PiB, seamlessly scaling to help compute clusters even as much as 50,000 cores. 
• Operational simplicity: Azure NetApp Information is designed for simplicity, with handy person expertise by way of the Azure Portal or by way of automation API. 
• Price effectivity: Azure NetApp Information provides cool entry to transparently transfer cool information blocks to managed Azure storage tier for diminished value, after which mechanically again to the new tier on entry. Moreover, Azure NetApp Information reserved capability supplies vital value financial savings in comparison with pay-as-you-go pricing, additional decreasing the excessive prices related to enterprise-grade storage options. 
• Safety and reliability: Azure NetApp Information supplies enterprise-grade information administration, control-plane, and data-plane safety options, guaranteeing that crucial EDA information is protected and obtainable with key administration and encryption for information at relaxation and for information in transit. 

The graphic beneath reveals a manufacturing EDA cluster deployed in Azure by the Azure cloud {hardware} group the place Azure NetApp Information serves purchasers with over 50,000 cores per cluster.

Azure NetApp Information supplies the scalable efficiency and reliability that we have to facilitate seamless integration with Azure for a various set of Digital Design Automation instruments utilized in silicon growth.

—Mike Lemus, Director, Silicon Improvement Compute Options at Microsoft.

In at this time’s fast-paced world of semiconductor design, Azure NetApp Information provides agility, efficiency, safety, and stability—the keys to delivering silicon innovation for our Azure cloud.

—Silvian Goldenberg, Associate and Normal Supervisor for Design Methodology and Silicon Infrastructure at Microsoft.

Be taught extra about Azure NetApp Information

Azure NetApp Information has confirmed to be the storage resolution of selection for probably the most demanding EDA workloads. By offering low latency, excessive throughput, and scalable efficiency, Azure NetApp Information helps the dynamic and sophisticated nature of EDA duties, guaranteeing speedy entry to cutting-edge processors and seamless integration with Azure’s HPC resolution stack.

Try Azure Nicely-Architected Framework perspective on Azure NetApp Information for detailed info and steering.

For additional info associated to Azure NetApp Information, take a look at the Azure NetApp Information documentation right here.