Success Story
Huawei High-End Servers Build an Efficient Chip
Simulation Platform for Singapore GlobalFoundries
Abstract
Industry
Chip manufacturing industry
Introduction
GlobalFoundries is the global leading semiconductor chip manufacturer, established by the
chip manufacturing department of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in 2009.
GlobalFoundries has fabrication plants in New York, Germany, and Singapore, serving for
industry-leading enterprises, such as, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple. GlobalFoundries's
annual revenue in 2013 was more than US$4 billion.
Challenges

The development of chip techniques
and manufacturing brings great
challenges
to
Singapore
GlobalFoundries.

The existing chip simulation platform
provides poor performance that cannot
meet simulation service requirements,
impacting chip design verification and
test tasks.

The chip simulation software provides
poor concurrent capability, and its
performance and reliability cannot be
improved
through
distributed
deployment. To prevent the simulation
process from being interrupted, each
server must deliver high performance
without breakdown.
Solution



Huawei uses new-generation 8P
RH8100
V3
servers
and
high-performance ES300 V2 PCIe SSD
cards to replace the original servers on
the simulation platform and construct a
new-generation
efficient
chip
simulation system.
The RH8100 V3 provides 6 TB
memory capacity and 1.2 TB
high-performance ES300 V2 PCIe SSD
cards. It increases the simulation system
performance by over 10x by eliminating
data exchange between CPUs and hard
disks in the calculation process and
reducing read and write operations on
hard disks.
The RH8100 V3 provides fault
tolerance of chips and 60 RAS features,
ensuring stable system operating. The
RH8100 V3 is the only server that
allows hot swap of DIMMs, preventing
system breakdown caused by memory
hardware faults.
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Challenges
With the consumption trend of electronic products moving towards mobile devices, the
demands for small-size and low-power-consumption chips are rising, which calls for higher
chip-making technologies. In response, major global chip foundry giants start to develop 16
nm and 14 nm fabrication processes. However, the huge investment on advanced fabrication
plants, for example, ten billion dollars for a new plant, poses great operation pressure to the
chip foundry enterprises.
As a global leading semiconductor chip manufacturer, GlobalFoundries has always invested
heavily in advanced technologies. It acquired the IBM chip manufacturing business unit in
2014 to strengthen its expertise.
Its 12-inch and 8-inch wafer fabrication plants in Singapore are the most important R&D and
manufacturing bases of GlobalFoundries. Facing tough challenges from new fabrication
processes and techniques, the Singapore plants are grappling with improving chip simulation
efficiency.
Each time after receiving a big contract, the chip foundry enterprise need to perform chip
design verification and tests, which require a large amount of storage and computing
resources. The existing simulation platform, however, cannot meet the service requirements.
The simulation platform has the following drawbacks:
Poor performance
Generally, it takes about one day to complete a typical simulation calculation task on the
simulation platform. This seriously affects the chip R&D, testing, and delivery.
Aged architecture
The key components, such as processors and memory, of the existing servers have limited
scalability, which restricts the expansion of computing and storage capability. The aged
server architecture cannot meet service requirements of the simulation platform.
Low reliability
The chip simulation software provides poor concurrent capability, and its performance and
reliability cannot be improved through distributed deployment. To prevent the simulation
process from being interrupted, each server must deliver high performance without
breakdown.
Solution
To improve the performance of the existing simulation platform, GlobalFoundries started to
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Customer Benefits

The new chip simulation platform
reduces the time for handling a typical
calculation task from one day to one
hour.

The RH8100 V3 supports 192 DIMMs,
twenty-four 2.5-inch SAS HDDs,
SATA HDDs, or SSDs, 16 PCIe
expansion slots, and 40GE and 100GE
networks. It offers the needed flexibility
for future expansion.

Huawei servers offer 15% lower failure
rate than the industry average, ensuring
reliable running of simulation services.
seek a solution vendor from 2014. GlobalFoundries finally chose Huawei due to the
outstanding performance, differentiated features, and high cost effectiveness offered by the
Huawei solution.
In this solution, Huawei new-generation 8P RH8100 V3 servers and high-performance ES300
V2 PCIe SSD cards are used to replace the original servers on the simulation platform.
High performance
The 8P RH8100 V3 mission-critical server is Huawei's new-generation flagship server. It
supports eight Intel® Xeon® E7-8800 v2 series processors and provides optimal computing
capability and scalability. It is ideal for large-scale key applications and server consolidation
and virtualization. The RH8100 V3 supports 192 DIMMs and provides up to 12 TB memory
capacity and 1.2 TB high-performance ES300 V2 PCIe SSD cards. It eliminates data
exchange between processors and hard disks in the calculation process and loads simulation
calculation data to the memory in one time and a little process data to SSD cards, reducing
read and write operations on hard disks. The RH8100 V3 improves the simulation system
performance by over 10x.
High scalability
The RH8100 V3 supports 192 DIMMs, twenty-four 2.5-inch SAS HDDs, SATA HDDs, or
SSDs, 16 PCIe expansion slots, and 40GE and 100GE networks. It offers the needed
flexibility for future expansion. The RH8100 V3 also supports online maintenance and
replacement of the DIMM, PCIe card, hard disk, fan module, PSU, and DVD-ROM drive,
preventing service interruption during capacity expansion.
High reliability
The RH8100 V3 provides 60 RAS features and fault tolerance of chips, such as automatic
recovery for processors and links, ensuring stable system operating. It also provides reliability
technologies, such as memory mirroring, memory backup, and hot swap of PCIe cards. The
RH8100 V3 is the only server that allows hot swap of DIMMs, preventing system breakdown
caused by memory hardware faults. The RH8100 V3 supports hot swap of key components,
such as PSUs, fan modules, and hard disks, without opening the chassis cover. This enables
quick replacement of faulty components during normal system operation.
Huawei IT products are manufactured based on its mature production platform for telecom
equipment. Strict quality control criteria are adopted for each process, such as raw material
management, production, and factory tests. For example, Huawei performs full disk read and
write tests in addition to common tests for the hard disk aging test. The standard of Huawei's
full disk read and write tests is far higher than that of random sector read and write tests in the
industry. With high standards of the entire process, Huawei servers offer 15% lower failure
rate than the industry average, ensuring reliable running of simulation services for Singapore
GlobalFoundries.
Customer Benefits
Through strict POC tests, Singapore GlobalFoundries started to use Huawei RH8100 V3
servers and ES3000 V2 PCIe SSD cards for simulation services from 2014. Huawei servers
build an efficient chip simulation platform for GlobalFoundries.

The new chip simulation platform reduces the time for handling a typical calculation
task from one day to one hour.

The RH8100 V3 supports 192 DIMMs, twenty-four 2.5-inch SAS HDDs, SATA
HDDs, or SSDs, 16 PCIe expansion slots, and 40GE and 100GE networks. It offers the
needed flexibility for future expansion.

Huawei servers offer 15% lower failure rate than the industry average, ensuring reliable
running of simulation services.
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