Compute servers are the primary computational resource in an HPC cluster. These servers are responsible for running the preferred workloads. Optimal compute configuration depends on the applications and customer specific goals. There are several configurations available including heterogenous options. Heterogenous configurations are popular as many environments have mixed workloads. For example, in a traditional HPC environment, many applications are CPU only. An organization that focuses on traditional HPC with some GPU codes (like deep learning), would benefit from tailoring the configuration towards dense compute with a few GPU-based compute servers. 

Table 2 lists the available compute platforms. The options vary in density and compute type (GPU support). There are both AMD and Intel based options, the choice of depends on customer needs and workload. For specific configuration examples see our three reference building blocks in the next section.

Table 2.      Compute server configuration options