LSOLINK Enables Intelligent Computing Network for European Biomedical Lab

Customer Background

In June 2023, a Malaysian data center construction company undertook a high-performance computing network construction project for a European biomedical research laboratory. The project goal is to build an intelligent computing cluster containing 800 NVIDIA A100 GPUs in a data center in Iceland, using the current industry-leading InfiniBand HDR network architecture.

Project Challenges

At the beginning of the project, the client faced the following core challenges:

• Product delivery time is tight: the original 200G QSFP56 optical module delivery cycle is as long as 20 weeks, which seriously affects the overall progress of the project.
• There is great pressure to control costs: the unit price of the 200G QSFP56 multi-mode optical module is as high as US$1,000, which exceeds the customer’s budget.
• Third-party product stability issues: In the past, 200G multi-mode products provided by cooperative suppliers had a large number of link flap problems, which have not been completely resolved so far.

Due to the above challenges, customers urgently need a high-performance, high-stability, low-cost, and short-delivery network connection solution to ensure smooth progress of the project and on-schedule delivery.

Solution Design

After multiple rounds of technical communication and solution discussions, we customized a 200G QSFP56 DAC (Direct Attach Cable) and AOC (Active Optical Cable) hybrid deployment solution for our customers. This solution effectively balances cost, performance and deployment efficiency, providing a solid guarantee for project implementation.

• Leaf-Spine architecture optimization: Deploy Leaf switches in cabinets surrounding Spine switches to shorten the physical connection distance.
• Leaf-Spine connectivity uses 200G QSFP56 DAC: Utilizing short-distance copper cables for efficient, low-latency data transmission.
• Server-Leaf connectivity features 200G QSFP56 AOC: Using active optical cables for more flexible cabling while maintaining high performance.

Solution Advantages

Super cost-effective

The price of 200G QSFP56 DAC is only 30% of AOC, which greatly reduces the overall procurement cost. The price of 200G QSFP56 AOC is 40% of the original product, achieving significant cost reduction while maintaining high performance.

Short lead time

It only takes 8 working days from customer order to product delivery, which greatly relieves project progress pressure.

Strong transmission stability

• Bit error rate before FEC error correction: DAC bit error rate is 1E-11, AOC is 1E-10;
• Bit error rate after FEC error correction: all lower than 1E-15;
• AOC uses DSP chip technology, which has stronger anti-interference capabilities than traditional CDR chips and avoids link jitter caused by sudden data.

Excellent latency performance

Leaf and Spine are directly connected using DAC copper cables, without the need for photoelectric conversion, and the transmission delay is extremely low, significantly improving the overall network efficiency.

Implementation guarantee improvement

• We participate in the entire customer site inspection, program design, deployment implementation and acceptance plan formulation;
• Provide comprehensive technical support services without charging any technical service fees;
• In the end, the person in charge of the end customer laboratory reported that the model was running smoothly and the project acceptance was successfully passed.

Conclusion

This project not only successfully helped customers complete the construction of high-performance intelligent computing clusters, but also won high recognition from customers. At present, this customer has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with us and has officially become our core partner. In the future, we will deepen cooperation in multiple high-performance computing, data center interconnection and other projects.