May 26, 2012
Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently unveiled the first petascale system dedicated to scientific research, a Cray XT machine with a theoretical peak performance of 1.64 petaflops. We talked with Doug Kothe, director of science at ORNL's National Center for Computational Sciences, about the challenges of and potential breakthroughs in science now possible with this built-for-science petascale system.
2010 Annual HPCwire Readers Choice Awards
(12/09/2008)
- If you are familiar with current approaches to programming accelerators, you are either discomforted by the complexities, or excited at the levels of control you can get. Can we come up with a different model of GPU and accelerator programming -- a model that allows HPC programmers to focus on domain science instead of on computer science?
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(11/21/2008)
- OpenCL (the Open Computing Language) is under development by the Khronos Group as an open, royalty-free standard for parallel programming of CPUs, GPUs, the Cell and other parallel processors. An update of the effort was presented at SC08 on Nov. 17.
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(11/21/2008)
- The "cloud" model of exporting user workload and services to remote, distributed and virtual environments is emerging as a powerful computing paradigm. Yet, one domain that challenges this model in its characteristics and needs is high performance computing.
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(11/20/2008)
- John West had a great conversation with Matt Reilly, chief engineer for SiCortex. Matt talked about what's going on with the SiCortex's low power, high density compute platform, and then he discussed the need for the computer science curriculum to include parallelism.
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(11/20/2008)
- InfiniBand has been a comfort zone for those tightly-coupled HPC applications that can't live without their addiction to low latency and high speed. If your application is a science experiment with good funding and no firm schedule, that's OK. If your application involves business, deadlines, and ROI, it's time to break out of that comfort zone and acquaint yourself with 10 Gigabit Ethernet.
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(11/19/2008)
- At SC08 this week, Appro announced it had completed the final deployment of 38 teraflop Xtreme-X supercomputer for the ING Renault F1 Team. The new system lives in a brand new CFD facility, built for environmentally-friendly computing.
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(11/19/2008)
- Researchers at Tohoku University in Sendai, north-eastern Japan, announced on Wednesday that they had broken a batch of performance records on their NEC SX-9 supercomputer, as measured on the HPC Challenge Benchmark test. Hiroaki Kobayashi, director the university's Cyberscience Center, said the SX-9 had achieved the highest marks ever in 19 of 28 areas the test evaluates in computer processing, memory bandwidth and networking bandwidth.
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(11/19/2008)
- John West talks with John Lee, vice president of advanced technology solutions for Appro; Steve Cumings, director of infrastructure for HP's Scalable Computing and Infrastructure Group; Morgan Littlewood, vice president of Violin Memory; Jim Falgout, chief technologist for Pervasive's DataRush; and Dave Ellis, director of HPC architecture for LSI, on the SC08 show floor. We also present our second Two-Option Audio Quiz.
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(11/19/2008)
- A team led by Thomas Schulthess of Oak Ridge National Laboratory has broken the petaflop barrier with a supercomputing application likely to accelerate the revolution in magnetic storage. Using ORNL's upgraded Cray XT Jaguar supercomputer, the team was able to achieve a sustained performance of 1.05 petaflops for an application that simulates the behavior of electron systems.
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(11/19/2008)
- Chapel is a high-level parallel programming language being developed by Cray for DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program. We asked Brad Chamberlain, the technical lead for the Chapel language project, to give us an overview of the language, the rational behind its design, and an update on the current state of the Chapel effort.
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(11/18/2008)
- This week Sun is announcing new Constellation wins at Sandia and Aachen University, which come on the heels of large announcements at Forschungszentrum Jülich slated for installation in 2009, the Korean Institute of Science and Technology Information system, and a system in Canada at the Ontario Cancer Biomarker Network.
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(11/18/2008)
- John West talks with Cray CEO Peter Ungaro, Sun Microsystems EVP John Fowler, and SGI SVP Dave Parry on the SC08 show floor. John also corners some randomly chosen exhibitors and attendees and gives them our Two-Option Audio Quiz.
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(11/18/2008)
- New GPGPU computing platforms are in the works at NVIDIA and AMD. NVIDIA has partnered with a number of OEMs and system integrators to offer Tesla-equipped personal supercomputers, while AMD has released its most powerful GPU computing board, the AMD FireStream 9270, and has also partnered with Silicon Valley startup Aprius to offer a 9.6 teraflop GPU expansion chassis.
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(11/18/2008)
- Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell delivered the keynote address at the Supercomputing conference this morning in Austin, Texas, offering his perspective on where high performance computing is headed. We caught up with Dell shortly before the conference to get a preview of the keynote and to ask him about some of the hot-button issues that are driving the HPC industry today.
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(11/17/2008)
- Supercomputing legend Steve Wallach will be honored at SC08 with IEEE's Seymour Cray Award. HPCwire recently talked to Wallach about everything from the future of HPC to his philosophy on building a successful HPC business.
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(11/17/2008)
- The HPC community has been dabbling with Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for several years now, but the technology has never reached escape velocity. But at SC08 this week, startup Convey Computer Corp. launched a new server and software stack that aims to tame FPGAs and deliver reconfigurable computing to everyday HPC users.
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(11/16/2008)
- After more than a year of planning, the 20th annual Supercomputing conference (SC08) kicks off on Monday in Austin, Texas. SC08's general chair, Patricia J. Teller, tells us what we can look forward to this week.
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(11/12/2008)
- Although the final day of the conference is always a half-day, it's often a half-day not to be missed, and this year is no exception.
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(11/12/2008)
- Thursday's examination of the large scale computations and technologies needed to support fusion science in "Simulation at the Petascale and Beyond for Fusion Energy Science" falls into both the Computing at Scale and Application Horizons themes and provides a view into one of the most pressing research areas of our time.
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(11/12/2008)
- Once a year, the leading experts from the world of high performance computing gather at SC to assess the current state of HPC and to look ahead to what the future holds. As the conference prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary, several industry thought leaders and long-time attendees reflect on what is most important to them.
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(11/11/2008)
- Wednesday morning starts off looking at one of the most talked about visions of the HPC future to come on the scene in the recent past: Parallel Computing Landscape: A View from Berkeley. David Patterson, one of the report's principal authors, discusses A View in this invited talk.
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(11/10/2008)
- Sunday and Monday during the conference feature a wide range of informative tutorials and thought provoking workshops. These days before the conference begins in earnest can be a good time to settle in and make the transition from everyday work into a frame of mind where you can do something that is increasingly a rare activity: thinking strategically about how supercomputing and HPC fit into your business.
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(11/10/2008)
- The annual Supercomputing (SC) conference is the most important gathering of high performance computing professionals in the United States. You'd like to make sure that your time there is well spent, but SC can easily overwhelm attendees. It is all too easy to end up wandering the show floor for three days with the vague sense that you're missing something.
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(11/10/2008)
- Tuesday marks the first full day of the conference technical program. This year’s conference keynote will be given by Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell, Inc. Dell’s selection reflects both the changing face of the industry, and the conference’s location – Dell is headquartered about 20 miles north of Austin in Round Rock, Texas.
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Michael Feldman
What Caught My Attention at SC08
A show the size of the Supercomputing Conference is difficult to swallow whole. With hundreds of exhibitors and conference activities, it's virtually impossible to get a balanced perspective. That said, here are a few areas that caught my attention at SC08.
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Michael Feldman
In a Photo Finish, Roadrunner Beats Jaguar
Last week's announcement of the upgraded "Jaguar" system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory had a lot of people, including yours truly, thinking that the Cray super would take the TOP500 crown this time around. It was not to be. Read more...
Michael Feldman
Supercomputing Puts On a Happy Face
Amid the gloomiest economy in decades, the year's Supercomputing conference -- SC08 -- got underway in Austin, Texas. Despite the worldwide financial turmoil, the 2008 conference may turn out to be the largest SC event of them all, with over 330 exhibitors and more than 10,000 registered attendees. Read more...
Michael Feldman
Packing for SC08
The 20th annual Supercomputing (SC) conference launches next week in Austin, Texas. As usual, HPCwire will be providing live coverage, but this year we decided to include some pre-conference guidance for the event. Read more...
Podcast: HP Downsizes; Fujitsu Gears Up for Growth
HP announces plans to shed 8 percent of its workforce, while Fujitsu looks to expand its HPC presence in Europe and elsewhere.
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Podcast: NVIDIA's Kepler Debuts in HPC; Intel Adds to Chip Count
NVIDIA pushes Kepler into HPC and beyond. And Intel adds three new families of Xeon chips.
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James Reinders
James Reinders is a senior engineer for Intel and has helped develop supercomputers, microprocessors and software tools for 25 years. James focuses on parallel programming models and is the author of a number of books on the topic.
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Gary Johnson
Gary M. Johnson is the founder of Computational Science Solutions, LLC, and a specialist in HPC management as well as the development of national science and technology policy. He is also involved in the creation of education and research programs in computational engineering and science.
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Andrew Jones
Andrew Jones has over 15 years of experience in HPC, in supercomputer center management and as a research user in industry. He now leads the HPC Services & Consulting at Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG).
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Addison Snell
Addison Snell is the CEO of Intersect360 Research and a veteran of the high performance computing industry. During his tenure, he has established Intersect360 Research as a premier source of market information, analysis and consulting.
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Michael Wolfe
Michael Wolfe has developed compilers for over 30 years in both academia and industry, and is now a senior compiler engineer at The Portland Group, Inc.
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