Microsoft recently announced its new HBv4-series and HX-series virtual machines (VMs) for high performance computing (HPC). These new HX and HBv4 VMs are packed with innovative technologies to deliver impressive performance, including:
- 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors (Preview, Q4 2022).
- Upcoming AMD EPYC processors, codenamed “Genoa-X,” (with general availability in 1H 2023).
- 800 GB/s of DDR5 memory bandwidth (STREAM TRIAD).
- 400 Gb/s NVIDIA Quantum-2 CX7 InfiniBand, the first on the public cloud.
- 80 Gb/s Azure Accelerated Networking.
- PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSDs delivering 12 GB/s (read) and 7 GB/s (write) of storage bandwidth.
Compared to the HBv3-series VMs, the new HX and HBv4 VMs offer the following performance improvements.
- Up to 2.24x higher performance for CFD workloads
- Up to 5.3x higher performance for FEA workloads
- Up to 2.51x higher performance for weather simulation workloads
- Up to 2x higher performance for molecular dynamics workloads
- Up to 1.87x higher performance for rendering workloads
- Up to 2.45x higher performance for chemistry workloads
The new HX-series and HBv4-series VMs are coming soon to the East US region. It will be later available in South Central US, West US3, and West Europe regions.
Microsoft and AMD share a vision for a new era of high-performance computing in the cloud: one defined by constant improvements to the critical research and business workloads that matter most to our customers. – Joe Greenseid Principal Product Manager, Azure HPC
