This topic describes the features of Super Computing Cluster (SCC) instance families and lists the instance types of each family.

Introduction

SCC is based on Elastic Compute Service (ECS) Bare Metal Instance and significantly improves the network performance and acceleration ratio of large-scale clusters by using the high-speed Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) based interconnects. SCC has all the benefits of ECS Bare Metal Instance and can provide high-quality network performance that features high bandwidth and low latency.

SCC is used in scenarios such as high performance computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, scientific computing, engineering computing, data analysis, and audio and video processing. In SCCs, nodes are connected over RDMA networks that feature high bandwidth and low latency. This ensures the parallel efficiency of applications in areas such as high performance computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) networks rival InfiniBand networks in terms of connection speed and can support more Ethernet-based applications.

SCC can be used in conjunction with other Alibaba Cloud computing services such as ECS and Elastic GPU Service to provide ultimate high-performance parallel computing resources for Elastic High Performance Computing (E-HPC) and make cloud-based super computing possible.

Comparison of SCCs, physical machines, and virtual machines

The following table compares the features of SCCs, physical machines, and virtual machines. In this table, Y means supported, N means not supported, and N/A means not applicable.

Feature type Feature SCC Physical machine Virtual machine
Automated O&M Delivery within minutes Y N Y
Compute Zero performance loss Y Y N
Zero feature loss Y Y N
Zero resource contention Y Y N
Storage Compatibility with ECS disks Y N Y
Startup from system disks Y N Y
Quick reset of system disks Y N Y
Use of ECS images Y N Y
Cold migration between physical and virtual machines Y N Y
No need to install the operating system Y N Y
No need of local redundant arrays of independent disks (RAIDs) and better protection of data in disks Y N Y
Networks Compatibility with virtual private clouds (VPCs) Y N Y
Compatibility with the classic network Y N Y
No communication bottlenecks between physical and virtual machine clusters in VPCs Y N Y
Management Compatibility with existing ECS management systems Y N Y
Consistent user experience on features such as Virtual Network Computing (VNC) with that on virtual machines Y N Y
Out-of-band (OOB) network security Y N N/A

scchfc6, compute-optimized SCC instance family with high clock speeds

To use this instance family, submit a ticket.

Features:
  • Provides all features of ECS Bare Metal Instance.
  • Compute:
    • Offers a CPU-to-memory ratio of 1:2.4.
    • Uses 3.1 GHz Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8269 (Cascade Lake) processors that deliver an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz.
  • Storage:
    • Is an instance family in which all instances are I/O optimized.
    • Supports enhanced SSDs (ESSDs), standard SSDs, and ultra disks.
  • Network:
    • Supports IPv6.
    • Supports both RoCE networks and VPCs. RoCE networks are dedicated to RDMA communication.
  • Applicable scenarios:
    • Large-scale machine learning training
    • Large-scale high-performance scientific computing and simulations
    • Large-scale data analysis, batch processing, and video encoding
Instance types
Instance type vCPUs Physical cores Memory (GiB) Bandwidth (Gbit/s) Packet forwarding rate (pps) RoCE (Gbit/s) NIC queues ENIs (including one primary ENI) Private IP addresses per ENI
ecs.scchfc6.20xlarge 80 40 192.0 30 6,000,000 50 8 32 10
Note

scchfg6, general-purpose SCC instance family with high clock speeds

To use this instance family, submit a ticket.

Features:
  • Provides all features of ECS Bare Metal Instance.
  • Compute:
    • Offers a CPU-to-memory ratio of 1:4.8.
    • Uses 3.1 GHz Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8269 (Cascade Lake) processors that deliver an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz.
  • Storage:
    • Is an instance family in which all instances are I/O optimized.
    • Supports ESSDs, standard SSDs, and ultra disks.
  • Network:
    • Supports IPv6.
    • Supports both RoCE networks and VPCs. RoCE networks are dedicated to RDMA communication.
  • Applicable scenarios:
    • Large-scale machine learning training
    • Large-scale high-performance scientific computing and simulations
    • Large-scale data analysis, batch processing, and video encoding
Instance types
Instance type vCPUs Physical cores Memory (GiB) Bandwidth (Gbit/s) Packet forwarding rate (pps) RoCE (Gbit/s) NIC queues ENIs (including one primary ENI) Private IP addresses per ENI
ecs.scchfg6.20xlarge 80 40 384.0 30 6,000,000 50 8 32 10
Note

scchfr6, memory-optimized SCC instance family with high clock speeds

To use this instance family, submit a ticket.

Features:
  • Provides all features of ECS Bare Metal Instance.
  • Compute:
    • Offers a CPU-to-memory ratio of 1:9.6.
    • Uses 3.1 GHz Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8269 (Cascade Lake) processors that deliver an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz.
  • Storage:
    • Is an instance family in which all instances are I/O optimized.
    • Supports ESSDs, standard SSDs, and ultra disks.
  • Network:
    • Supports IPv6.
    • Supports both RoCE networks and VPCs. RoCE networks are dedicated to RDMA communication.
  • Applicable scenarios:
    • Large-scale machine learning training
    • Large-scale high-performance scientific computing and simulations
    • Large-scale data analysis, batch processing, and video encoding
Instance types
Instance type vCPUs Physical cores Memory (GiB) Bandwidth (Gbit/s) Packet forwarding rate (pps) RoCE (Gbit/s) NIC queues ENIs (including one primary ENI) Private IP addresses per ENI
ecs.scchfr6.20xlarge 80 40 768.0 30 6,000,000 50 8 32 10
Note

scch5, SCC instance family with high clock speeds

Features:
  • Provides all features of ECS Bare Metal Instance.
  • Compute:
    • Offers a CPU-to-memory ratio of 1:3.
    • Uses 3.1 GHz Intel® Xeon® Gold 6149 (Skylake) processors.
  • Storage:
    • Is an instance family in which all instances are I/O optimized.
    • Supports standard SSDs and ultra disks.
  • Network:
    • Supports both RoCE networks and VPCs. RoCE networks are dedicated to RDMA communication.
  • Applicable scenarios:
    • Large-scale machine learning training
    • Large-scale high-performance scientific computing and simulations
    • Large-scale data analysis, batch processing, and video encoding
Instance types
Instance type vCPUs Physical cores Memory (GiB) Bandwidth (Gbit/s) Packet forwarding rate (pps) RoCE (Gbit/s) NIC queues ENIs (including one primary ENI) Private IP addresses per ENI
ecs.scch5.16xlarge 64 32 192.0 10 4,500,000 50 8 32 10
Note

sccg5, general-purpose SCC instance family

Features:
  • Provides all features of ECS Bare Metal Instance.
  • Compute:
    • Offers a CPU-to-memory ratio of 1:4.
    • Uses 2.5 GHz Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8163 (Skylake) processors for consistent computing performance.
  • Storage:
    • Is an instance family in which all instances are I/O optimized.
    • Supports standard SSDs and ultra disks.
  • Network:
    • Supports both RoCE networks and VPCs. RoCE networks are dedicated to RDMA communication.
  • Applicable scenarios:
    • Large-scale machine learning training
    • Large-scale high-performance scientific computing and simulations
    • Large-scale data analysis, batch processing, and video encoding
Instance types
Instance type vCPUs Physical cores Memory (GiB) Bandwidth (Gbit/s) Packet forwarding rate (pps) RoCE (Gbit/s) NIC queues ENIs (including one primary ENI) Private IP addresses per ENI
ecs.sccg5.24xlarge 96 48 384.0 10 4,500,000 50 8 32 10
Note

sccgn6e, GPU-accelerated compute-optimized SCC instance family

To use this instance family, submit a ticket.

Features:
  • Provides all features of ECS Bare Metal Instance.
  • Compute:
    • Uses NVIDIA V100 GPUs (SXM2-based) that feature:
      • Innovative NVIDIA Volta architecture
      • 32 GB HBM2 GPU memory
      • CUDA Cores 5120
      • Tensor Cores 640
      • GPU memory bandwidth of up to 900 GB/s
      • Support for up to six NVLink connections and total bandwidth of 300 GB/s (25 GB/s per connection)
    • Offers a CPU-to-memory ratio of 1:8.
    • Uses 2.5 GHz Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8163 (Skylake) processors for consistent computing performance.
  • Storage:
    • Is an instance family in which all instances are I/O optimized.
    • Supports ESSDs, standard SSDs, and ultra disks.
    • Supports high-performance CPFS.
  • Network:
    • Supports IPv6.
    • Supports VPCs.
    • Supports RoCE v2 networks, which are dedicated to low-latency RDMA communication.
  • Applicable scenarios:
    • Ultra-large-scale training for machine learning on a distributed GPU cluster
    • Large-scale high-performance scientific computing and simulations
    • Large-scale data analysis, batch processing, and video encoding
Instance types
Instance type vCPUs Memory (GiB) GPU GPU memory (GB) Bandwidth (Gbit/s) Packet forwarding rate (pps) RoCE (Gbit/s) NIC queues ENIs (including one primary ENI) Private IP addresses per ENI
ecs.sccgn6e.24xlarge 96 768.0 NVIDIA V100 × 8 32GB × 8 32 4,800,000 50 8 32 10
Note

sccgn6, GPU-accelerated compute-optimized SCC instance family

Features:
  • Provides all features of ECS Bare Metal Instance.
  • Compute:
    • Uses NVIDIA V100 GPUs (SXM2-based) that feature:
      • Innovative NVIDIA Volta architecture
      • Up to 16 GB HBM2 GPU memory
      • CUDA Cores 5120
      • Tensor Cores 640
      • GPU memory bandwidth of up to 900 GB/s
      • Support for up to six NVLink connections and total bandwidth of 300 GB/s (25 GB/s per connection)
    • Offers a CPU-to-memory ratio of 1:4.
    • Uses 2.5 GHz Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8163 (Skylake) processors for consistent computing performance.
  • Storage:
    • Is an instance family in which all instances are I/O optimized.
    • Supports ESSDs, standard SSDs, and ultra disks.
    • Supports high-performance CPFS.
  • Network:
    • Supports IPv6.
    • Supports VPCs.
    • Supports RoCE v2 networks, which are dedicated to low-latency RDMA communication.
  • Applicable scenarios:
    • Ultra-large-scale training for machine learning on a distributed GPU cluster
    • Large-scale high-performance scientific computing and simulations
    • Large-scale data analysis, batch processing, and video encoding
Instance types
Instance type vCPUs Memory (GiB) GPU Bandwidth (Gbit/s) Packet forwarding rate (pps) RoCE (Gbit/s) NIC queues ENIs (including one primary ENI) Private IP addresses per ENI
ecs.sccgn6.24xlarge 96 384.0 NVIDIA V100 × 8 30 4,500,000 50 8 32 10
Note

Billing

SCCs support pay-as-you-go and subscription billing methods. For more information, see Billing method overview.