NextIO unveils vCore GPGPU appliances

Hardware vendor NextIO has released two appliances which the company hopes will extend the appeal of high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

The vCore Express and vCore Extreme devices will offer companies an affordable way to adopt general processing over GPU (GPGPU) platforms.

GPGPU platforms have grown in popularity over recent years, as developers and researchers sought to harness the multi-threading capabilities of graphics chips for use in HPC fields such as geological mapping, media rendering and financial analysis.

"There is a lot of number crunching that GPUs are very good at," explained NextIO director of product management Rick Trujillo. "It can speed up your processing by 20 to 30 times in some cases."

Based on Nvidia's Fermi processors and Linux-based management software from Bright Computing, the vCore appliances connect with servers and supplement the server CPU cores.

The four-chip vCore Express system supports connections with one or two servers, while the eight-processor vCore Extreme supports additional server connections.

NextIO marketing director Violet Leff told V3.co.uk that the platform targets traditional HPC fields, with the additional goal of expanding GPGPU to smaller vendors that may not be able to afford larger GPGPU cluster systems.

"This does lend itself to a variety of segments," he said. "There are a lot of different vertical markets that these particular products can go into."