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Teratec 2024 Forum
Thursday, May 30th

Workshop 05 - 09:00 am to 12:30 am

Is the Cloud the (inevitable) future of HPC?
Urban legends and realities

Chaired by Gilles Tourpe, Business Development Manager HPC, AWS and Xavier Vigouroux, Head of business development, CGG

Standardised ethernet Networks for AI and HPC
By Christophe Compain, Systems Engineering, Arista Networks

Without a decent network, there is no HPC or AI at scale. Over the past decade, there has been a notable transition from proprietary technologies to more open, standardised designs in network architecture supporting HPC/AI workloads. This shift, largely instigated by hyperscalers, has ushered in several key innovations:

  • Advancements in the ethernet semiconductor ecosystem have yielded faster silicon and optics
  • Standardised networking stacks based on Ethernet/IP offer unparalleled scalability, minimal latency, proven high availability, and consistent performance 
  • Simplified and highly automated operations boast real-time visibility 

Cloud service providers, research institutions and enterprises have undoubtedly benefited from this evolution and, while hyperscalers are deploying massive AI clusters for their own purposes, some are also offering scalable HPC/AI services for all market segments. 

Nevertheless, some enterprises and research organisations are choosing to build their own HPC/AI infrastructures adhering to the same established design principles to do so: high-performance networks based on Ethernet/IP standards. 

As a founding member of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, Arista is a trusted advisor that has collaborated with Hyperscalers from the start of this evolution. Arista designs scalable networks and is trusted by over 9,000 customers of their networks across varying use cases. 

The aim of this presentation is to explain these technology trends and help demystify the building of high-performance networks in order to empower research organisations, service providers and enterprises to build their own HPC/AI networks. 

Biography: Christophe Compain is an Ethernet/IP technical expert : he designs and makes evolve Datacenter (generalist or HPC/AI) networks, Campus LAN, MAN, WAN/internet) of large European and French companies. Christophe started his career in 1998 as file-transfert technology consultant, then he moved to the world of the servers/systems and storage infrastructures beginning of 2000 at HP. He joined Cisco in 2007 to focus on Datacenter and Backbone networks. Since 2017, he works for Arista Networks (worldwide leader for high speed ethernet networks) as an routing technical leader within the EMEA team. Christophe has a MSeng of Ecole Centrale Marseille and a MS of Aix-Marseille University (numerical modelling in Solids Mechanics). In 2022, he obtained an AI/DS Executive Master of Dauphine University.

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