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TO INFINIBAND AND BEYOND

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 8, Issue 06 - October 2008

WHEN DYNAMIC YOUNG COMPANY MOBILEYE WAS SEEKING A TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION THAT
MATCHED THE POWER OF ITS OWN VISION AND INNOVATION, IT HAD A TOUGH CHALLENGE ON
ITS HANDS. THEN IT DISCOVERED QLOGIC'S INFINIBAND

The dilemma facing Mobileye, an innovative computerised vision and automotive electronics Israeli company, was typical for young, aspiring enterprises: marshalling a high-performance computer infrastructure, without the financial resources that are a prerequisite of conventional HPC installation. Mobileye is based in Israel, a country that gained fame as a hotbed of high-tech innovation, fuelled by a talented and ambitious generation of scientists and engineers streaming from top-tier universities. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is one of those world-renowned centres of excellence and is the source of much of the original research on which Mobileye is building its commercial offering.

ENVIABLE REPUTATION

Mobileye earned its enviable reputation in the automotive industry - BMW, Volvo, General Motors and many Japanese manufacturers are among the growing list of its customers for driver assistance, collision avoidance vision systems - utilising the fruits of breakthrough research. The algorithmic innovation embedded in Mobileye's products is distilled from analyses of extraordinary amounts of data, static and dynamic images of real-world driving experience. A high-performance computing engine is required to analyse the image streams, capture the essence of the changing situation, simulating likely outcome and responding in real-time. The challenge is to reduce the amount of hardware required in the vehicle, which is highly constrained by price, space, energy consumption and environmental considerations. The aim is to condense the core of the vision system into a single-chip solution, so that it can be mass-produced at a very low price.

Currently, Mobileye's solution is generally applicable mainly for expensive, luxury cars, but the potential market is much larger. Regulators in many countries are pushing to adapt similar technology into the standard car, thus impacting the road safety statistics. To this end, Mobileye was tasked with a demanding requirement: to increase dramatically the power of data processing, number crunching and event simulation platform. HIGH PERFORMANCE "Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, no adequate budget was allocated for conventional solution, namely purchasing a ready-made super-computer," Mobileye points out. "So we explored the alternative idea of building high-performance cluster, based on industry-standard, off-the-shelf components. "This motivation brought us to contact QLogic, a leader in switching and high-speed interface technology, a contact that resulted in basing our infrastructure on its SilverStorm InfiniBand fabric."

Early on, it became clear that InfiniBand was the key to superior cluster performance. The standard was optimally designed to interconnect multiple processing and storage devices in a tightly meshed web, minimising latency and maximising bandwidth within the cluster. "Unlike other fabric options, such as Fibre Channel and Ethernet, InfiniBand was designed for intra-cluster communications," says Ishai Tal, systems and configuration manager at Mobileye.

"It does not suffer from excessive overhead in the traffic control protocols, nor from physical medium bottlenecks. The critical decision in architecting an InfiniBand solution is selecting the switch at the hob of the cluster. This realisation focused our selection process on a competitive shoot-out between three leading suppliers of InfiniBand solution. From this test, QLogic emerged as the clear and uncontested leader."

Mobileye employs SilverStorm 24 ports switches in order to interlink a battery of Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers, each fitted with two Quad-Core Xeon CPUs and 16 GB RAM, and to cross-link the processing nodes with the NAS storage. The cluster runs under open source Linux, using open-source applications for resource management. "This configuration is supremely capable and cost-efficient," says Tal. "It embodies best practices in employing open standards and non-proprietary hardware for computer-intensive missions, while retaining flexibility and ease of use, which are not the hallmarks of conventional HPC solutions. The intelligent and robust design of the switch, SilverStorm 9024, is central to the overall cost-effectiveness of the cluster."

The technical excellence of QLogic's offer was evident immediately from the documented specification, but not less enticing were the support and insight offered by the manufacturer design and applications experts. "I have very demanding clients to satisfy," states Tal. "Our R&D lab is chockfull with experts in real-time high bandwidth visual processing - and they insist on approving every decision that may impact their work. We run extensive tests and cultivated close contacts with QLogic's experts regarding obscure points of system fine-tuning and optimisation. The knowledge we gained by the interaction is no less valuable than the hardware itself. We figure that a measurable part of the performance gain is directly attributable to what we've learnt from these experts."

ARTIFICIAL VISION

The spectrum of applications running on Mobileye cluster is unusually wide. In addition to 'artificial vision' applications, heuristic reasoning, pattern recognition programmes and adaptive algorithms, the cluster provides a platform for simulation, software development (Matlab) and QA. "You can define the cluster as a virtual grid: one that can be partitioned and the parts allocated, according to needs in a dynamic fashion," adds Tal. "This flexibility implies severe functional requirements from the system in general and the switching fabric in particular. "It should be noted that the return on investment, at least in this case, if far more encompassing than mere cash-flow projections. Our most scarce and valuable resource is brainpower, and the real key to success is maximising the throughput of our researchers and developers. Previously, the computer system was the bottleneck, so even a minor improvement in the cluster could have a dramatic impact on the team achievements. From benchmarks taken before and after the reconfiguration, we know that the actual improvements are major, dramatic even. Viewed through the prism of ROI, the project is a 'no-brainer'. You just cannot ignore the imperative to restructure the cluster around InfiniBand."

OVERWHELMING INTEREST

Mobileye is on the verge of announcing the availability of the world's first single-chip, realtime vision solution that can meet the tough automotive industry criteria for embedded safety devices. This system is unique in employing a single camera (other solutions need two cameras for stereoscopic vision), and being highly immune to weather and atmospheric effects. It can detect and distinguish between stationary and moving objects, pedestrians and vehicles, in bright daylight and by night. Car manufacturers can use its advanced analytics in order to programme sophisticated responses to various indications of danger, including lane following, distance keeping, collision avoidance, emergency braking, signalling, etc.

"The interest in our solution is just overwhelming," says Tal. "It is very satisfying, after all these years of investment, commitment and hard work. But it also increases the pressure to get fast to the market with a multitude of products, reflecting the different requirements of different customers. For me and my department, the utmost satisfaction is to see how our innovative solution is powering Mobileye's fast acceleration - and QLogic definitely deserves the credit for providing the cornerstone to our re-engineered cluster."