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ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU

Product Guide

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15 Sep 2024
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Abstract

The ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU is a general-purpose GPU optimized for media stream density and quality. It is designed for data center and edge applications, with high levels of reliability, availability, and scalability.

This product guide provides essential presales information to understand the Flex 170 GPU and its key features, specifications, and compatibility. This guide is intended for technical specialists, sales specialists, sales engineers, IT architects, and other IT professionals who want to learn more about the Flex 170 GPU and consider its use in IT solutions.

Change History

Changes in the September 15, 2023 update:

Introduction

The ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU is a general-purpose GPU optimized for media stream density and quality. It is designed for data center and edge applications, with high levels of reliability, availability, and scalability. The GPU is suitable for media processing and delivery, Windows and Android cloud gaming, virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), and AI visual inference applications.

The Intel Data Center GPU Flex 170 is suitable for workloads that include complex AI models, such as multiple object detection or multiple classification models. With its AI compute power, the Flex 170 GPU avoids becoming AI bound. It can support the same number of video streams per adapter as the compute requirements increase.

 

ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU
Figure 1. ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU

Did you know?

The Intel Flex Series GPUs support an open, flexible, standards-based software stack together with oneAPI so developers can build high-performance, cross-architecture applications and solutions. This helps organizations reduce the complexity, cost, and time requirements to bring new solutions to market, enabling engineers and programmers to innovate instead of maintaining code.

Part number information

The following table shows the ordering information for the Flex 170 GPU.

Table 1. Ordering information
Part number Feature code Description Controlled GPU status
4X67A86131 BU01 ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU No

The Flex 170 GPU is not Controlled which means the GPU is unrestricted and is available in all markets.

The option part number includes the following:

  • One Flex 170 GPU with full-height (3U) adapter bracket attached
  • Two extender brackets (straight, offset)
  • Documentation

Features

Intel Data Center GPU Flex Series is a flexible, robust, and the industry's most open GPU solution for the intelligent visual cloud. The GPUs support a diverse range of workloads in the industry starting with media streaming and cloud gaming, followed by support for AI visual inference and virtual desktop Infrastructure workloads. It supports an open, standards-based software stack optimized for density and quality with critical server capabilities for high reliability, availability, and scalability. This helps reduce the need for data centers to use disparate solutions and manage heterogenous or proprietary environments.

The ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU offers the following features:

  • Open Architecture

    The Intel Flex Series GPU supports an open, flexible, standards-based software stack together with oneAPI so developers can build high-performance, cross-architecture applications and solutions. This helps organizations reduce the complexity, cost, and time requirements to bring new solutions to market, enabling engineers and programmers to innovate instead of maintaining code.

  • Built-In AV1 Encode

    Services built on the royalty-free open-source AV1 codec mean lowering operational expenses while providing higher video quality. Advanced video coding (AVC), High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), and VP9 support also comes standard with the Intel Data Center GPU.

  • No Licensing Fees

    Intel provides free virtual GPU software license to customers for lowering their total cost of ownership in VDI deployments. Furthermore, this can act as a catalyst to accelerate the GPU adoption rate in VDI deployments where graphics & encode accelerations are desired/preferred but can often be cost prohibitive.

  • Flexible vGPU Management

    The Intel Data Center GPU Flex Series supports multiple vGPU configuration & scheduling options for VDI solutions to meet different customer workload and QoS requirements—such as Linux KVM open-source virtualization technology and VMware ESXi. It also supports both VMware Horizon and Citrix DaaS† on top. The Flex Series accelerators have strong ecosystem support. The top two industry leading desktop & application virtualization solutions, VMware Horizon and Citrix DaaS, will be supported.

  • High Performance Virtual Desktop

    The Intel Data Center GPU Flex 170 is ideal for VDI deployment targeting power users persona – 3D and media content creation workloads whose graphics and compute performance requirements are high.

Technical specifications

The following table lists the specifications of the Flex 170 GPU.

Table 2. Specifications
Feature Flex 170
GPU Architecture Xe HPG
GPUs per card 1
Execution units 512
Intel Xe Cores 32
Media Engine 2
Ray Tracing 32 RT units
FP32 peak performance 16.8 TFLOPS
FP16 peak performance 128 TFLOPS
INT8 peak performance 256 TOPS
INT4 peak performance 512 TOPS
GPU Memory 16 GB ECC GDDR6
Memory Bandwidth 576 GB/s
Virtualization (SR-IOV) 31 Virtual Functions (VFs)
System Interface PCIe Gen 4, x16 lanes
Form Factor PCIe full-height, full-length, single width
Max Power Consumption 150 W
Thermal Solution Passive
Encoding and decoding
  • H.264 Hardware Encode/Decode
  • H.265 (HEVC) Hardware Encode/Decode
  • AV1 Encode/Decode
  • VP9 Bitstream & Decoding

Server support

The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.

Table 3. Server support (Part 1 of 4)
Part Number Description AMD V3 2S Intel V3/V4 4S 8S Intel V3 Multi Node V3/V4 GPU Rich
SR635 V3 (7D9H / 7D9G)
SR655 V3 (7D9F / 7D9E)
SR645 V3 (7D9D / 7D9C)
SR665 V3 (7D9B / 7D9A)
ST650 V3 (7D7B / 7D7A)
SR630 V3 (7D72 / 7D73)
SR650 V3 (7D75 / 7D76)
SR630 V4 (7DG8 / 7DG9)
SR850 V3 (7D97 / 7D96)
SR860 V3 (7D94 / 7D93)
SR950 V3 (7DC5 / 7DC4)
SD535 V3 (7DD8 / 7DD1)
SD530 V3 (7DDA / 7DD3)
SD550 V3 (7DD9 / 7DD2)
SD520 V4 (7DFZ / 7DFY)
SR670 V2 (7Z22 / 7Z23)
SR675 V3 (7D9Q / 7D9R)
SR680a V3 (7DHE)
SR685a V3 (7DHC)
SR780a V3 (7DJ5)
4X67A86131 ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N
Table 4. Server support (Part 2 of 4)
Part Number Description 1S V3 Edge Super Computing 1S Intel V2 2S Intel V2
ST50 V3 (7DF4 / 7DF3)
ST250 V3 (7DCF / 7DCE)
SR250 V3 (7DCM / 7DCL)
SE350 (7Z46 / 7D1X)
SE350 V2 (7DA9)
SE360 V2 (7DAM)
SE450 (7D8T)
SE455 V3 (7DBY)
SD665 V3 (7D9P)
SD665-N V3 (7DAZ)
SD650 V3 (7D7M)
SD650-I V3 (7D7L)
SD650-N V3 (7D7N)
ST50 V2 (7D8K / 7D8J)
ST250 V2 (7D8G / 7D8F)
SR250 V2 (7D7R / 7D7Q)
ST650 V2 (7Z75 / 7Z74)
SR630 V2 (7Z70 / 7Z71)
SR650 V2 (7Z72 / 7Z73)
4X67A86131 ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU N N N N N N 1 N N N N N N N N N N N N
Table 5. Server support (Part 3 of 4)
Part Number Description AMD V1 Dense V2 4S V2 8S 4S V1 1S Intel V1
SR635 (7Y98 / 7Y99)
SR655 (7Y00 / 7Z01)
SR655 Client OS
SR645 (7D2Y / 7D2X)
SR665 (7D2W / 7D2V)
SD630 V2 (7D1K)
SD650 V2 (7D1M)
SD650-N V2 (7D1N)
SN550 V2 (7Z69)
SR850 V2 (7D31 / 7D32)
SR860 V2 (7Z59 / 7Z60)
SR950 (7X11 / 7X12)
SR850 (7X18 / 7X19)
SR850P (7D2F / 2D2G)
SR860 (7X69 / 7X70)
ST50 (7Y48 / 7Y50)
ST250 (7Y45 / 7Y46)
SR150 (7Y54)
SR250 (7Y52 / 7Y51)
4X67A86131 ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N
Table 6. Server support (Part 4 of 4)
Part Number Description 2S Intel V1 Dense V1
ST550 (7X09 / 7X10)
SR530 (7X07 / 7X08)
SR550 (7X03 / 7X04)
SR570 (7Y02 / 7Y03)
SR590 (7X98 / 7X99)
SR630 (7X01 / 7X02)
SR650 (7X05 / 7X06)
SR670 (7Y36 / 7Y37)
SD530 (7X21)
SD650 (7X58)
SN550 (7X16)
SN850 (7X15)
4X67A86131 ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU N N N N N N N N N N N N

Software stack

The Flex Series GPU supports an open, flexible, standards-based software stack with oneAPI cross-architecture programming. The stack includes open source components and libraries, tools and frameworks so developers can create high-performance, cross-architecture media applications and solutions to meet a wide range of use cases. This open approach removes the barriers to proprietary models where code portability and the ability to adopt new architectures across multiple vendors is limited.

Intel enables the software ecosystem through industry collaborations, initiatives and standards bodies. It also provides ongoing leadership, investment and technical contributions to the open source community.

The common set of software capabilities integrates into popular middleware and frameworks, and the stack is delivered in validated productized containers or reference stacks. The containers can be orchestrated with Kubernetes on bare metal or in VMs using SR-IOV virtualization with tools to assign and manage workloads. The toolset is designed to speed time-to-market and enable flexible deployment of multiple workloads on the same GPU.

Software Stack for Intel® Data Center GPU Flex Series
Figure 2. Software Stack for Intel Data Center GPU Flex Series (source: intel.com)

The following components are part of the Intel oneAPI Base Toolkit (individual tools can be downloaded separately):

  • oneAPI Deep Neural Network Library (oneDNN)
  • oneAPI Data Analytics Library (oneDAL)
  • oneAPI Video Processing Library (oneVPL)
  • Intel VTune Profiler

The following Intel-optimized tools are part of the Intel AI Analytics Toolkit:

  • TensorFlow
  • PyTorch

For more information about Intel oneAPI, see https://intel.com/oneapi

Operating system support

The following table lists the supported operating systems:

Tip: These tables are automatically generated based on data from Lenovo ServerProven.

Table 7. Operating system support for ThinkSystem Intel Flex 170 16GB Gen4 Passive GPU, 4X67A86131
Operating systems
SE450
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Y
Microsoft Windows Server 2022 Y
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 Y
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 Y
Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS Y
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Y
VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 7.0 U3 Y
VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 8.0 Y

Auxiliary power cables

The Flex 170 GPU option part number does not ship with auxiliary power cables. Cables are server-specific due to length requirements and the connector on the server end of the cable. For CTO orders, auxiliary power cables are derived by the configurator. For field upgrades, cables will need to be ordered separately as listed in the table below.

Table 8. Auxiliary power cables for the Flex 170 GPU
Auxiliary power cable needed with the SE450

450mm cable
Option: 4X97A90159, ThinkEdge SE450 Intel Flex 170 GPU Power Cable
Feature: BZU3
SBB: SBB7A78275
Base: SC17B68639
FRU: 03LC071

Operating environment

The Flex 170 GPU has the following operating characteristics:

  • Ambient temperature
    • Operational: 0°C to 85°C
    • Storage: -40°C to 70°C
  • Relative humidity:
    • Operational: 5 to 85%
    • Storage: 5 to 90%

Physical specifications

The Flex 170 GPU has the following physical specifications:

  • Height: 111 mm (including edge connector)
  • Length: 254 mm
  • Width: 19 mm
  • Weight: 806 g

Warranty

One year limited warranty. When installed in a Lenovo server, the GPU assumes the server’s base warranty and any warranty upgrades.

Related product families

Product families related to this document are the following:

Trademarks

Lenovo and the Lenovo logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both. A current list of Lenovo trademarks is available on the Web at https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/legal/copytrade/.

The following terms are trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both:
Lenovo®
ServerProven®
ThinkAgile®
ThinkSystem®

The following terms are trademarks of other companies:

AMD is a trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Intel® and VTune® are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.

Linux® is the trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.

Microsoft®, Windows Server®, and Windows® are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.