Reference Guide

Introduction
5 Reference Architecture of Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC Life Sciences | Document 309
1 Introduction
Dell EMC has updated PowerEdge 14th Generation servers with 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, a
boon to HPC applications. In addition to offering more cores, the solution offers Optane support, faster DRAM
(DDR4-2933 in 1 DPC configuration), and more DRAM configurations (1TB, 2TB, and 4TB). Consumers are
generally expecting more performance, better efficiency, and lower power from a newer processor. However,
some customers look for the improvements which are not obvious such as support for new instructions,
layered ecosystem optimizations, support for new technology, or a new product direction. Since 2nd
generation processor was built on a foundation of the predecessor focusing on the secondary characteristics,
most open-source applications in Life Sciences take a longer time to adopt those advantages. Nonetheless,
this reference architecture illustrates how the new CPUs behave on two different genomics workloads, variant
calling and de novo assembly, especially with the newer version of Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC Lustre
Storage.