TABLE OF CONTENTS
2 WHAT IS IN-MEMORY COMPUTING (IMC)
Benefits of IMC
Concerns with In-Memory Processing
Advanced In-Memory Computing
using Supermicro MemX13 MEMX ARCHITECTURE
MemX Functionality and Operation

WHITE PAPER

ADVANCED IN-MEMORY COMPUTING
USING SUPERMICRO MEMXSOLUTION

At Boot TimeAt Runtime
MemX Benefits
System Memory (GB)Internal Storage (GB)

5 MEMX APPLIANCE SPECIFICATIONMemX PCIe NVMe Drives
5 PERFORMANCE TESTING: MEMCACHEDWEB-CACHING
Test Configuration
6 PERFORMANCE TEST RESULTS
Bandwidth (Transaction per Second)
Latency
7 PERFORMANCE TESTING: MYSQL
8 CONCLUSION

July 2017

Super Micro Computer, Inc.
980 Rock Avenue
San Jose, CA 95131 USA
www.supermicro.com

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYWith the rise of real time and on-demand applications, massive data is generated whichneeds better and faster processing that derives meaningful patterns from the data
generated. In Big Data generation, it is said that bigger is always better but that holds true
only if data can be processed quickly to be utilized by key stake holders. Failure to achieve
desired performance leads to revenue losses and highlights the need of in-memorycomputing.

WHAT IS IN-MEMORY COMPUTING (IMC)
With the explosion of data gathering we are seeing today, organizations need to find new ways of collecting, sorting, and analyzing thisdata in order to make real-time business decisions. Having a large amount of data at your disposal is only one part of the equation. Being
able to use the data is just as important. Enterprise storage systems can no longer keep up with the demand of real-time analytics, soBig Data System Administrators have turned to large scale-up systems populated with massive amounts of expensive DRAM, or set up
distributed in-memory grids consisting of many servers.

Benefits of IMC
By turning to in-memory computing, businesses can quickly discover patterns, analyze massive data volumes, and perform businessintelligence operations in real time. In-Memory Computing is used in diverse industries such as financial services, telecommunications,healthcare and life sciences, government, energy, transportation, among many others.
Some of the benefits of in-memory computing include•• Mitigating Errors and Avoiding Future Failures
Real-time data analytics allows businesses to quickly predict, react and/or avoid future operating problems. Doing so protects
business continuity and keeps customers satisfied.
•• Advanced Business Intelligence
Staying ahead of the competition is key. Using in-memory computing for BI applications allows businesses to become dynamic, andtransform their strategies on the fly.
•• Fraud Detection
Security is paramount. Cyber-attacks lead to financial losses and business down-time. Real-time security systems expose these threats
and allow them to be mitigated instantly.

Concerns with In-Memory Processing
There are some physical limitations to the size of data to be placed into memory:
1. Capacity limitations
a. Memory module capacity
b. Server total memory capacity

2. Cost limitations
a. At the time of writing, commodity 64GB DIMMs are less than $1000 per unit while 128GB DIMMs are uncommon and costly, e.g.
more than $4,000 per unit.
b. For distributed applications, it is possible to increase total memory by adding server nodes, but the additional expenses ofsystems, processors, and networking become cost prohibitive.

Advanced In-Memory Computing using Supermicro MemX1
By replacing large monolithic servers with Supermicro’s high- performance MemX solution (using NVMe Solid State Drives from Western
Digital Corporation and Software-defined Memory), system administrators can now extend DRAM to much larger system memory.
Further, MemX uses direct attached NVMe storage to replace slow external SAN or NAS storage. This greatly reduces initial acquisition
costs by up to 90%, while reducing operational costs and providing added scale-out flexibility over competing DRAM In-Memory
Computing solutions.
1

MemX Software-defined Memory technology licensed from ScaleMP

2Advanced In-Memory Computing using Supermicro MemX Solution

Advanced In-Memory Computingusing Supermicro MemX Solution

MEMX ARCHITECTURE
Transition from DRAM to Hybrid DRAM-NVM System Memory
Breaking the memory-storage barrier

OSOS

Software Defined Memory

SATA

NVMe

SASSATATransitionSATA

ComputeMemory

NVMe

SASStorage

ComputeMemory

SASStorage

Figure 1: before and after use of Software-defined Memory (SDM) over Storage

MemX Functionality and Operation
At Boot TimeOS
Software Defined Memory

NVMe

NVMe

ComputeMemory•• BIOS table list the increased memory map by the added
capacity of the NVMe SSDs•• The NVMe SSDs are hidden from PCI Bus Scanning

At Runtime
SATASAS•• When OS or application access anything that is present inDRAM, the CPU handles that directly. The DRAM is used asa cache.
•• When access occurs to data that is not present in DRAM
(cache-miss), the MemX software-defined memory kicks inand brings the required data into DRAM.
•• The MemX software-defined memory uses machinelearning to continuously prefetch from the NVMe SSDs tosignificantly reduce misses.

Storage

White Paper - July 2017

3

MemX Benefits
With Supermicro’s MemX Solution, end users can increase their system memory up to 2X and their internal storage up to 10X, comparedto and Enterprise 8-socket system. This allows for greater server consolidation, making Supermicro MemX the most flexible, scalable IMC
solution on the market.

System Memory (GB)Up to 2x Memory
Increase

ENTERPRISE SCALE-UP SYSTEM

SUPERMICRO MEMX HD

SUPERMICRO MEMXSUPERMICRO MEMX ENTERPRISE

Internal Storage (GB)Up to 12x Storage
Increase

ENTERPRISE SCALE-UP SYSTEM

SUPERMICRO MEMX HD

SUPERMICRO MEMXSUPERMICRO MEMX ENTERPRISE

Figure 2: Scale advantages for Supermicro MemX over Enterprise scale-up system

4

Advanced In-Memory Computing using Supermicro MemX Solution

Advanced In-Memory Computing
using Supermicro MemX Solution

MEMX APPLIANCE SPECIFICATIONMEMX CLOUD

MEMX

SYS-2028U-TN24R4T+

MEMX ENTERPRISE

SYS-2028BT-HNR+

SYS-1028U-TN10RT+

Processors

E5-2683 v4

E5-2683 v4

E5-2683 v4

E5-2699 v4

Total Cores

32 cores @ 2.1GHz

32 cores @ 2.1GHz

32 cores @ 2.1GHz

44 cores @ 2.2GHz

Total System
Memory (GB)*3,328 / 11,776

3,328 / 11,776

3,328 / 11,776

6,656 / 11,776

1,920

9,600 / 38,400

60,800 / 145,920

137,600 / 330,240

2 x 10GBase-T ports (SIOM)

2 x 10GBase-T ports

2 x 10GBase-T ports

2 x 10GBase-T ports(PER NODE)

Total SSD Storage
Size (GB)SSD Storage
Model

MEMX HD

SSG-2028R-NR48N

MemX PCI-E NVMe Drives
The Supermicro MemX utilizes two types of PCI-E NVMe flash drives for memory extension and for storage capacity.
•• For memory extension, HGST Ultrastar SN200® NVMe drives of capacities 800GB, 1.6TB, and 3.2TB are utilized with memory sizes of512GB, 1024GB, and 2048GB respectively.
•• For storage in MemX Cloud offering, 1.92TB SanDisk™ Skyhawk NVMe SSDs are used. For the other MemX offerings, HGST Ultrastar
SN200® drives are used, with up to 7.68TB per SSD.

PERFORMANCE TESTING: MEMCACHED WEB-CACHING
Test Configuration
Memcached is a general-purpose distributed memory caching system. It is often used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites bycaching data and objects in RAM to reduce the number of times the persistent or back-end data source (such as a database) must be read.
Memcached allows for a cluster to be used as cache, meaning if one wants a larger cache, they can add servers to the memcached cluster.
In this test, we measure the number of 1K transactions that a single physical memcached server can process per second, by loading itfrom a much more powerful load-generation system to drive it to its limits. We then compare the results obtained by a regular server with768GB of DRAM serving as the memcached server, to the results obtained by a MemX server reconfigured for only 768GB capacity, of
which only 1/8 is DRAM (96GB) and 7/8 come from two NVMe SSDs.

White Paper - July 20175

TEST SYSTEM(MEMX HD, SCALED DOWN IN ORDER TO BE COMPARABLE IN SIZE TO STANDARD DUAL-SOCKET SYSTEM)CPU

2 x E5-2699v4MEMORY

96GB

MEMX MEMORY EXTENSION

768GB

INTERNAL STORAGE:

3.2TB

MEMCACHED SYSTEM

2x E5-2699 v4 @ 2.20GHz - 88 CPUs

MEMASLAP SYSTEM(LOAD-GENERATOR)

4x E7-8890 v3 @ 2.50GHz - 144 CPUs

NETWORK TOPOLOGY

10GbE dedicated back-to-back link

LOAD CHARACTERISTICS

key:value=128B:1024B, get:set=90%:10%

PERFORMANCE TEST RESULTS
Bandwidth (Transaction per Second)
Initial performance tests for an in-memory caching software – memcached. MemX HD, reconfigured to only have 96GB of DRAM,
expanded to a total of 768GB of memory using MemX architecture (NVMe SSDs and Software-Defined Memory), was able to deliver 98%
of the performance (Transaction per Second) of a standard server configuration with 768GB of DRAM.

Enterprise Scale-Up System vs. Supermicro MemX
900,000
800,000

TPS (ops/s)

700,000
600,000
500,000
400,000
300,000
200,000
100,000
00

1,800

3,600

5,400

7,200

9,000

10,80012,60014,40016,200

Seconds

DRAM ONLY - TPS (A)MEMX (96GB) - TPS (A)Figure 3: MemX Software-defined Memory delivers near-DRAM performance in rate of transactions

6Advanced In-Memory Computing using Supermicro MemX Solution

18,00019,80021,60023,400Advanced In-Memory Computing
using Supermicro MemX Solution

Latency
The charts below illustrate how the MemX solution delivers low, predictable latency – close to that of the DRAM-only server.

Enterprise Scale-Up System vs. Supermicro MemX
250
225Avg. Latency (us)

200
175
150
125
100
75
50
25
00

1,800

3,600

5,400

7,200

9,000

10,80012,60014,40016,20018,00019,80021,60023,400Seconds

DRAM ONLY - AVG LATENCY (A)MEMX (96GB) - AVG LATENCY (A)Figure 4: MemX Software-defined Memory delivers consistent low-latency performance

PERFORMANCE TESTING: MYSQL
In a separate performance characterization test using an Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) workload (TPC-C) with MySQL for a multitenant use case, the MemX HD solution using 96GB of DRAM to deliver 768GB of system memory, was able to deliver 80% and 74% of theperformance (TPC-C) for two industry standard DRAM servers with an Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2637 v4 3.5GHz with 16 CPU threads andan E5-2699 v4 2.2GHz processor with 88 CPU threads respectively.
NATIVE (786GB DRAM)MEMORY EXTENSION (96GB DRAM)

E5-2637 V4

3.5GHZ PROCESSOR WITH
16 CPU THREADS

108,000

87,000E5-2699 V4

2.2GHZ PROCESSOR WITH
88 CPU THREADS

398,000

0100,000

TPMC
200,000

296,000
300,000

400,000

500,000

Figure 5: MemX delivers 74%-80% of DRAM performance for in-memory TPC-C using MySQLWhite Paper - July 2017

7CONCLUSION
These performance characterizations and budgetary estimates point to a very compelling proposition for customers looking into large
memory configurations for in-memory processing requirements.
Three benefits of this solution are as follow:
First, with the memory extension solution, customers will be able to derive the full benefits of in-memory processing by increasing thesystem memory available.
Second, as the in-memory processing requirements grow, customers can extend the system memory using high performance NVMe
flash when the memory requirement grows above one or two terabytes. No need to add additional servers. Customers now have more
flexibility to scale based on CPU-utilization rather than maxing out on the amount of memory they can install in a server.
Third, by reducing the number of servers needed to support large memory configurations, customers are able to reduce the TCO andoperational costs for in-memory deployments. In addition, customers have the added capability to scale their storage capacity.
In-memory computing is vital to all of today’s organizations, but using the right IMC solution is paramount. Supermicro’s advanced inmemory computing solution – MemX – delivers the right insight faster, with a much lower CAPEX and OPEX, allowing any business to takeadvantage of the data they’ve gathered.

8Advanced In-Memory Computing using Supermicro MemX Solution

Advanced In-Memory Computing
using Supermicro MemX Solution

NOTES

White Paper - July 2017

9About Super Micro Computer, Inc.
Supermicro® (NASDAQ: SMCI), the leading innovator in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology is a premier provider ofadvanced server Building Block Solutions® for Data Center, Cloud Computing, Enterprise IT, Hadoop/Big Data, HPC and Embedded Systems
worldwide. Supermicro is committed to protecting the environment through its “We Keep IT Green®” initiative and provides customers
with the most energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly solutions available on the market.
www.supermicro.com

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