Ever wanted to see the hardware that the cloud runs on? Here it is.

Thursday, 11 January 2024 12:56

It's an old joke that the cloud is "just someone else's server", and while that's a fun simplification, the reality is that AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle, and the rest really do run physical server hardware in physical data centres. If you've ever managed your own server hardware you might be curious what one of the public cloud servers looks like. Thanks to AMD, iTWire got to see.

In December 2023 AMD announced its super powerful AMD Instinct MI300X accelerator, a serious stack of silicon designed to power the growing demand for generative AI. AMD chair, president, and CEO Dr Lisa Su said, "AI is the most transformational technology in 50 years. Maybe the only thing close is the introduction of the Internet, but with AI the adoption has been much, much quicker and we're only at the beginning of the AI era."

What impressed iTWire was not only the specs of the MI300X - 192GB RAM, 5.2TB/s memory bandwidth, 896GB/s fabric bandwidth, 153 billion transistors - but that AMD already had orders in the pipeline. The announcement wasn't about a future vision or a product that may emerge eventually; the MI300X was here, with Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) on board from day one, along with Gigabyte, Open AI, HPE, Dell, and others. It existed, and you could touch it.

So touch it iTWire did. Here's a look at the servers that power the cloud.

In this video we see the Microsoft Azure ND MI300X platform, running the AMD Instinct MI300X platform, in a huge 7U form factor and with an incredible 1.5TB of RAM:

So when you're spinning up a server or resource in the cloud, be it Azure, AWS, Google, Oracle, or someone else, that's the hardware it comes down to.

Of course, AMD's new powerhouse is not only for the cloud; you can order your own on-premises server too.

Here is a Gigabyte R383-R80 with 4x AMD Instinct MI300A APUs, in an air-cooled 2U form factor:

And here is HPE Cray's EX 255a accelerator with 8x AMD Instinct MI300A APUs, in a 1RU single slot blade for EX400/EX2500 systems. It is liquid-cooled to allow such dense computing in the small rack form:

The AMD Instinct MI300X platform is a powerhouse, designed to power the growing interest in generative AI, which is one of the most demanding workloads for server infrastructure. Imagine having one of these beasts in your own home?

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Ever wanted to see the hardware that the cloud runs on? Here it is.