Terminology

The following terminology is often used when working with Hypercompute Clusters.

Node or host

A single physical server machine in the data center. Each host has its associated compute resources such as accelerators. The number and configuration of these compute resources depend on the machine family. Virtual machine (VM) instances are provisioned on top of a physical host.

Sub-block

A group of hosts and associated connectivity hardware. For A3 Ultra, these hosts are connected by a large-scale distributed network fabric called Jupiter, that offers low predictable latency and flat bandwidth across all the hosts.

Block

A collection of sub-blocks that are connected by a layer of distributed network fabric.

Cluster

Provides a common, non-blocking network fabric for your blocks of accelerator capacity. Within a cluster, the east to west networking is non-blocking for the entire collection of blocks. Each cluster is globally unique.

Dense deployment

A resource request that allocates your accelerator resources physically close to each other to minimize network hops and optimize for the lowest latency.

Network fabric

A data center network layer that provides high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity across the compute resources.