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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:
- Added the Controlled status column to Table 1 - Part number information section
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.
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.
| 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.
Server support
The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.
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.
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.
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.
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 publications
For more information, refer to these documents:
- ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile GPU Summary:
https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp0768-thinksystem-thinkagile-gpu-summary - ServerProven compatibility:
https://serverproven.lenovo.com/ - Intel Data Center GPU Flex Series product page:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/discrete-gpus/data-center-gpu/flex-series.html - Intel oneAPI:
https://intel.com/oneapi
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.
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Full Change History
Changes in the September 15, 2023 update:
- Added the Controlled status column to Table 1 - Part number information section
First published: October 31, 2023
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