IDLab (Ghent University and the University ofAntwerp) Implements Supermicro’s Most PowerfulServer, Cuts Down AI Research Experiment Time
From Nearly Seven Hours Down To 40 Minutes
Supermicro’s new 10U GPU server using NVIDIA HGX-2 GPU
baseboards helps leading Belgian research team improve
calculation times by 10X which leads to faster AI development

INDUSTRY
Higher Education
CHALLENGE• Find an extremely highspeed GPU server that
could run at least 6 different
jobs at the same time, andfinish most jobs within 40minutes.
• Increase performance bya factor of 10 just keep upwith current demands
SOLUTION
Supermicro’s new GPU server
contains two NVIDIA HGX-2boards, each populated with
8 NVIDIA V100 GPUs, toenable extremely fast trainingof complex AI models.

IDLab is an imec research lab at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp. The
funding for the GPU server was obtained by Ghent University from FWO (ResearchFoundation – Flanders). Ghent University is a public research university locatedin Ghent, Belgium. Established in 1817, it is one of the largest Flemish universities,
consisting of 44,000 students and 15,000 staff members. Ghent University consistentlyrates among the top 100 universities in the world and is well-known in biotechnology,
medical and agricultural academic areas.

“Supermicro provided us the specs for their new GPU server and the performancecapabilities were impressive. We put a unit in our lab and were extremely pleased with
its computing power.
–Brecht Vermeulen, PhD, iLab.t at IDLab, Ghent University

Challenge
To keep a leading position in research and education, IDLab is extending its existing iLab.t testbed
infrastructure to support research in three new focus areas—AI Robotics, AIoT, and data mining. IDLab© Copyright 2020 SupermicroBENEFITS• Cut down experiments fromnearly seven hours down to40 minutes.
• Allows data scientists toconduct faster research byrunning multiple iterations
in a short amount of timeand converging on the bestsolution quickly.

already has several Supermicro GPU servers and storage systems in Ghent with traditional PCIe-based
solutions in their datacenter. “Our researchers are constantly pushing the limits of our hardware
infrastructure,” said Brecht Vermeulen, Ghent University, PhD, head of the research infrastructure iLab.t
at IDLab. “As a leader in AI research, it’s critical that we have a solution to meet the growing demandsof our team.”
The researchers in IDLab determined they required an extremely high-speed GPU server that could run atleast 6 different jobs at the same time, and finish most jobs within 40 minutes. “We conduct several tasks
at the same time and it’s imperative that we get timely results,” said Vermeulen. “Our analysis showedthat we needed to increase performance by a factor of 10 just to keep up with our current demands.”

SolutionABOUT SUPERMICROSupermicro (Nasdaq: SMCI),
the leading innovator inhigh-performance, high-efficiency server technology is apremier provider of advanced
Server Building BlockSolutions® for Data Center,
Cloud Computing, EnterpriseIT, Hadoop/Big Data, HPCand Embedded Systems
worldwide. Supermicro iscommitted to protecting theenvironment through its “We
Keep IT Green®” initiative andprovides customers with themost energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly solutions
available on the market.
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Based on their requirements, IDLab took interest in evaluating the most powerful GPU server on themarket. Designed for next-generation AI applications, Supermicro’s new GPU server contains twoNVIDIA HGX-2 boards, each populated with 8 NVIDIA V100 GPUs, to enable extremely fast training ofcomplex AI models. With the convergence of big data analytics and machine learning, and improved
machine learning algorithms, deep learning applications require the processing power of multiple
GPUs that must communicate efficiently and effectively to train larger and larger AI models.
“Supermicro provided us the specs for their new GPU server and the performance capabilities wereimpressive. We put a unit in our lab and were extremely pleased with its computing power. It just madesense for us to move forward with Supermicro’s solution,” said Vermeulen.
Besides the hardware design, another critical reason IDLab chose the Supermicro platform is because
Supermicro offers high flexibility to choose the appropriate memory, I/O and CPU, and allows users tohave their own software. Additionally, IDLab relied on Supermicro partner Server Storage Solutions forcustom-made services, delivering unparalleled technical advice, and fast and accurate on-site support.
“It was certainly advantageous to have the flexibility to use our own software to manage internal jobs,”
said Vermeulen. “We have developed our own software that allows our researchers to easily submit
deep learning tasks to the system. The Supermicro platform easily adopts to our needs.”

Benefits
IDLab has been using Supermicro’s new GPU server for nearly one year and has completed many AItasks, at a substantially quicker rate than before. “It’s remarkable how much faster we can now run ourtasks—we’ve cut down experiments from nearly seven hours down to 40 minutes. The speed improvements allow our data scientists to conduct faster research by running multiple iterations in a shortamount of time and converging on the best solution quickly,” said Vermeulen.
IDLab has already successfully conducted many research assignments. “We recently competed in the2019 DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge. With the help of Supermicro and our in-house developed GPULab software for job scheduling, we learned how to make optimal use of GPUs for optimising
the wireless spectrum collaboration using software-defined radios and AI, and our team was able toreach the finals.”
For more information, visit https://www.supermicro.com© Copyright 2020 Supermicro