Monthly Archives: March 2007

Reader Jeff Keasler emailed me today with a pointer to Tom’s Hardware Guide for great performance information on the new crop of chips. He gave me permission to post his email, so here it is (thanks, Jeff!):

John,

Tom’s hardware guide is perhaps the most unbiased source for hardware performance you can find. They do extensive benchmarking of hardware.

This was a comparison of AMD vs. Intel from several months ago:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/30/brute_force_quad_cores/page13.html

They have newer reviews

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This isn’t news since it was published two weeks ago, but it looks like an interesting read. Wall Street and Technology has an article on the struggles big finance is having as it ramps up really large HPC efforts

Over the past few years, Wall Street has taken a brute force approach to HPC, populating data centers with thousands of servers and racks of blades. These tactics can meet high-performance needs, but the grids and

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(Believe me, I’m not proud of that one).

SeekingAlpha reports that Sun is going to start selling its chips to the world again in a new business unit headed by Sun’s current storage head and former Sparc chief.

Software and server manufacturer Sun Microsystems has announced it is relaunching its Sparc microelectronics group, which will develop chips for the network, cryptography and high-performance computing markets. It will also supply the company’s systems businesses and do business

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Intel’s press release has a lot of glossy facts about their upcoming Penryn and Nehalem architectures. You might be interested in a read if you’re chip-inclined.

Penryn is the forthcoming family using 45nm and the new “hi-k” gates that all the kids are talking about (we talked about it too: here, here, here, and a couple other places I’m too lazy to paste in).

Six Penryn family processors, including dual and quad-core desktop processors

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From The Register yesterday:

Intel’s long, strange journey toward mimicking AMD’s processors will end in 2008 with a brand new chip architecture called “Nehalem,” the company confirmed today. Intel’s fresh chips will have up to eight cores and a number of other bits and pieces found today’s in server, desktop and notebook chips from AMD.

In case you’re wondering, the Wik says the “nehalem” is either a tribe of native American people who lived in the …

Not a great title, but it’s late in the day.

Reader Jason Blair has pointed us to an article over at Ars Technica about IBM’s discovery that how you pack the thermal paste on to a processor can make a big difference.

The Cliff’s notes (but the whole thing is interesting if you have the time to click over and read it):

A CPU’s heatspreader is normally attached directly to the core by use of a paste

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…we have the “Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking.”

From SC Online’s coverage:

Computational thinking, as developed by Jeannette M. Wing, head of Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Department, involves solving problems, designing systems and understanding human behavior by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science.

Hmm. Professor Wing is of course set to become the new head of the Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate at NSF on 1 July. Oh well, coincidence …

Dell has begun placing large HPC systems into a few centers around the world, like the one at 5,200 node Linux cluster at TACC, currently at #12 on The List. And they may have learned a few things from building those large clusters that they’re trying to build a market out of.

The Register is reporting on Dell’s Cloud Computing Solution:

… Dell has pledged to craft custom hardware for service providers looking to

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Speaking of the need to push HPC down into the underpinnings of every bit of science and engineering research in this country (which I seem to do every day), The Register is talking about PeakStream

The beta version of PeakStream Workstation for Microsoft Windows serves the same function as its existing Linux counterpart. Developers can use the PeakStream software to craft their own applications for mainstream multi-core chips and the oncoming wave of specialized mutli-core

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Mellanox announced this week new 10 and 20 Gb/s IB adapters with 1 microsecond latency. Release here.