(RDS) Tip of the Day: Azure N-Series Virtual Machines, the fastest GPUs in the public cloud, are now available in preview

Today’s Tip…

N-Series instances are enabled with NVIDIA’s cutting edge GPUs to allow you to run GPU-accelerated workloads and visualize them. These powerful sizes come with the agility you have come to expect from Azure, paying per-minute of usage.

Our N-Series VMs are split into two categories.

The NC-Series (compute-focused GPUs)

With the NC Series you will be able to run compute intensive HPC workloads using CUDA or OpenCL.

The Tesla K80 GPUs and offers the fastest computational GPU available in the public cloud. Furthermore, unlike other providers,

These are perfect for CUDA across many scenarios including energy exploration applications, crash simulations, ray traced rendering, deep learning and more.

The Tesla K80 delivers 4992 CUDA cores with a dual-GPU design, up to 2.91 Teraflops of double-precision and up to 8.93 Teraflops of single-precision performance. Following are the Tesla K80 GPU sizes available:

The NV-Series is focused more on visualization.

The NV Series is based around Data movement has traditionally been a challenge with HPC scenarios using large datasets produced in the cloud.

Tesla M60 GPUs and NVIDIA GRID in Azure for desktop accelerated applications and virtual desktops. With these powerful visualization GPUs in Azure, you will be able to visualize graphic-intensive workflows to get superior graphics capability and run single precision workloads such as encoding and rendering.

The Tesla M60 delivers 4096 CUDA cores in a dual-GPU design with up to 36 streams of 1080p H.264. Following are the Tesla M60 GPU Sizes available:

You can register for the preview here.

References:

• “Azure N-Series Virtual Machines, the fastest GPUs in the public cloud, are now available in preview” - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/uk_faculty_connection/2016/08/05/azure-n-series-virtual-machines-the-fastest-gpus-in-the-public-cloud-are-now-available-in-preview
• “Azure N-Series preview availability” - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-n-series-preview-availability
• “Introduction to NVIDIA GPUs in Azure” - https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2016/T615
• “Leveraging NVIDIA GPUs in Azure” - https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/Leveraging-NVIDIA-GPUs-in-Azure
• “Azure N-Series GPU Acceleration in the public cloud” - https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Tuesdays-With-Corey/Tuesdays-with-Corey-Azure-N-Series-GPU-Acceleration-in-the-public-cloud
• “XenApp 7.7 is Ready for Microsoft Azure” - https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2016/01/20/xenapp-7-7-is-ready-for-microsoft-azure
• “Teradici Joins Azure Big Compute Team Onstage At Build 2016” - https://connect.teradici.com/blog/teradici-joins-azure-big-compute-team-onstage-at-build-2016
• “Teradici and Microsoft Azure to turn heads at SIGGRAPH 2016” - https://connect.teradici.com/blog/teradici-and-microsoft-azure-to-turn-heads-at-siggraph-2016