Staying informed in this market can be difficult given our niche position. However, there are a few sources that anyone in this field should most definitely be familiar with.
First and foremost are the conferences, namely Supercomputing (SC). Held annually in the US, this monster get-together showcases all of the latest in research and development, plus offers a number of tutorials for emerging technology. A week here is equivalent to a semester in grad school. A distant second in this category is the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC) held annually in Germany.
Among online sources, the best for original articles is HPCwire, whom I’ve written for. As for news snippets, John E. West’s InsideHPC is a daily source. Coincidentally, John is also a regular contributor to HPCwire.
For the broader technology market, there are always Slashdot, Dzone, and The Register. These occasionally have articles that may be of interest to HPC practitioners.
Those are the major news and information sources. As mentioned before, a surprisingly bad source is Wikipedia. I had thought about the effort to create a “wikiHPC” to act as an online Hennessy and Patterson, but then I realized that we already have Wikipedia and so could probably just add to that. Grad students should feel free to copy and paste the factual background material of their thesis.
