Interpreting The MLPerf Storage Benchmark
Blocks&Files, Sunday, October 8,2023
Silverton Consulting's president, Ray Lucchesi, has looked at the MLPerf storage benchmark's initial results and suggested that simulated accelerators per compute node is a useful way to compare suppliers.
Last month we looked at this first MLPerf storage benchmark, which examines how well storage systems serve data to simulated Nvidia V100 GPUs. We focused on the MBps values per supplier system and found not that much difference between suppliers. DDN suggested we should focus on how many GPUs (accelerators in MLPerf terminology) are driven at a specified performance level from a given number of controllers, number of SSDs, and how much power is needed. DDN drives 40 GPUs from a single AI400X2 (2 controllers) and Weka drove 20 GPUs from 8 nodes. Nutanix agreed with this accelerator number per system metric, and it could drive 65 accelerators with a 5-node Nutanix cluster, 15 accelerators per node.