Samsung boosts AI in-memory processing with CXL

Samsung has developed in-memory processing to boost the performance of AI systems in data centres using the latest interconnect standards.

eenewseurope.com, Oct. 25, 2022 – 

The HBM-PIM (high bandwidth memory, processing in memory) chips are being used in AMD's instinct Mi100 AI accelerator. Samsung then developed an HBM-PIM Cluster with 96 Mi100 cards and applied it to various large-scale AI and High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications using 200Gbit/s Infiniband switches.

Compared to existing GPU accelerators, tests showed that, on average, the addition of HBM-PIM improved performance by more than double and energy consumption reduced by more than 50%.

For the latest AI models, accuracy tends to have a direct correlation with volume size, which points to a major hurdle. With existing memory solutions, computing this amount of data can be bottlenecked if the DRAM capacity and bandwidth for data transference are not adequately supported for Hyperscale AI models.

If a large capacity language model proposed by Google is trained on a cluster consisting of 8 accelerators, using a GPU accelerator equipped with HBM-PIM can save 2,100 GWh of energy per year and cut down 960 thousand tons of carbon emissions.

With software integration, pairing commercially available GPUs with HBM-PIM can reduce the bottleneck caused by memory capacity and bandwidth limitations in Hyperscale AI data centres.

Samsung has developed software using SYCL, an open software standard, to define specifications that can use GPU accelerators. With this software, customers will be able to use PIM memory solutions in an integrated software environment. Codeplay, recently acquired by Intel, is a key developer of SYCL.

"Codeplay is proud to have been deeply involved in defining the SYCL standard and playing a role in creating the first conformant product." said Charles Macfarlane, Chief Business Officer for at Codeplay Software, and the one in charge of working together on the SYCL standardization. "Our work with Samsung in simplifying software development via Samsung's PIM systems opens up a much greater ecosystem of tools for scientists, allowing them to focus on algorithm development rather than hardware-level details."

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