The Value of Acceleration for Credit Risk Analysis
One CSX700 processor can be anything from 2 to 40 times faster than a single x86 core, depending on the application. The effect on the overall application will, in general, be somewhat less than this. This is an important factor when evaluating the use of accelerators.
To understand the value of ClearSpeed's acceleration products, we look at two models. Firstly, the use of one CATS unit alongside each node. Secondly, adding one or more Advance accelerator cards to each server. In both cases we look at the systems required to provide the same level of application performance. This shows the significant savings that can be achieved through the use of appropriate acceleration technology. ClearSpeed's accelerators provide this with enterprise-class reliability.
CATS
A simple model for using the ClearSpeed Accelerated Terascale System (CATS) is to use one CATS unit for each server node. This has an even more significant benefit in terms of the size of system required. For credit risk analysis, this gives the following benefits. Read more...
| Unaccelerated System |
Accelerated System |
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or |  |
Accelerated system consists of one rack with equal numbers of server nodes and CATS 700 nodes. This provides the same performances as over 40 racks of x86-based servers. |
| Performance | Equivalent to 14,000 x86 cores | |||
| Power | 335 kW | 12 kW | 96% less power | |
| Cost | $10M | $600K | 94% lower capital outlay | |
| 3 year TCO | $11.6M | $643K | 94% lower running costs | |
Note: these figures do not take into account the extra air conditioning capacity nor the running costs of the cooling system required by the larger system. Therefore, in practice, the benefits may be even greater.
Accelerator cards
By adding a just single Advance accelerator card to each node in a cluster, the number of nodes required can also be dramatically reduced. For an application dominated by linear algebra (xGEMM) functions, 50% more nodes would be required in an unaccelerated system to achieve the same performance.
For most applications, more accelerator cards could be added to each node for even greater benefit.
All figures in these examples are based on an 8 core server based on the 3 GHz Core 2 Extreme Xeon processor, the Advance e720 accelerator and CATS 700.