Entries filed under “ISC'10 Feature Stories”
Original features from insideHPC editors and contributors about the people, organizations, and technologies fueling the buzz around ISC’10.
The Rich Report: InfiniBand Rocks the TOP500
On my recent trip to ISC10 in Hamburg this month, the real buzz centered around the industry reaching sustained Exaflops in the next decade or so. And while this milestone is daunting enough in terms of processing, it struck me that the challenges of getting that many cores connected with low latency is going to be the highest hurdle of all. Is InfiniBand going to get us there, or will it require something way beyond current technology trends? To find out, I caught up with Brian Sparks and Clem Cole from the InfiniBand Trade Association, to talk about IBTA’s latest performance roadmap.
insideHPC: This is TOP500 week. How did IB fare in the rankings?
[caption id="attachment_12347" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Brian Sparks, IBTA Marketing Working Group Co-Chair"]…
Video: Supermicro Showcases Twin Server Line
Coming from a hardware background, I love to see the latest gear at ISC. Chips, sockets, heat sinks, and blades: this is the kind of stuff I geek out on. So last week I dropped in on the Supermicro booth with my camera because they always fill entire walls with mother boards from their latest server products.
In this video, Supermicro VP of Marketing Don Clegg gives us a tour of their new Twin family of servers.
Between the ISCs: looking back over the past 12 months of HPC accomplishment
Thomas Sterling gives us the highlights of his review of the past 12 months in HPC, presented each year at ISC in Germany. From chips and interconnects to major programs and the accomplishments of HPC’s movers and shakers, Sterling reviews the events that best reflect the trends, directions, and accomplishments of the last year by the international supercomputing community.
Video: Life is Random, So is Your Storage
I am fascinated with the CGI effects in today’s feature films and it seems like HPC infrastructure has become a competitive weapon for the movie studios. So when I heard that Weta Digital (Lord of the Rings) was using BlueArc, I decided to take a closer look.
In this video, BlueArc VP of HPC Marketing Bjorn Andersson talks about why storage loads are so random and how the company’s storage solutions are built for optimal performance.
Video: Why is Everyone Talking About GPUs for HPC?
I think that NVIDIA was a big winner this year at ISC, and it wasn’t just because China’s new Tesla-powered Nebulae Supercomputer came in at number 2 on the TOP500. The reason for me was rapid adoption; I visited at least half a dozen booths that featured the latest NVIDIA GPUs in a variety of configurations. Clearly, the company is getting traction in the market.
In this video, I interview Andy Keane, NVIDIA General Manager of the Tesla Business Unit and discuss the advantages of GPUs for HPC. He also gives us his views on power efficiency and Exascale computing.
Video: New Modeling and Simulation Leadership Panel Seeks Members
In this video, Addison Snell, CEO of Intersect360 Research, describes the formation of the Modeling and Simulation Leadership Panel, a “worldwide panel of organizations using computational modeling, simulation, and analytics to advance their cutting-edge positions in engineering development and research.”
It looks like a sweet deal to me. End users who join the panel will receive free access to research from Intersect360 Research. In return, they agree to do a 30 minute survey on a quarterly basis.
Video: Dynamic GPU Reassignment with NextIO vCORE Appliance
I had grand designs to tape a bunch of demos at ISC10, but time just wouldn’t allow. So after scouting around a bit, I decided to film the best demo that I could find.
In this video, Kyle Geisler from NextIO demonstrates the company’s vCORE Appliance, the “world’s first flexible platform for GPU reassignment in the HPC datacenter.” Watch as he moves GPU resources around on-the-fly, even as they continue to run applications. Consider me impressed, and I can just imagine how powerful this capability will be for putting GPUs to work in the cloud.
Video: For HPC, The Russians are Coming!
There was something very new this year at ISC. At the very front of the exhibit hall was a large booth from T-Platforms, a Russian HPC vendor that drew a lot of attention with their hospitality and innovative approach to high performance computing. They’re young, they’re enthusiastic, and HPC is all they do.
In this video, T-Platforms VP of Marketing Alexey Nechuyatov describes the company’s focus on HPC and how they plan to bring their solutions to market in Western Europe.
Video: My iPad vs. IBM Blue Waters
Thanks to John West, I was able to embed this video from the ISC video blog coverage. I was watching the video and there I was on my iPad, which is kind of an odd feeling. Just so I don’t have to settle for that one second of fame, a couple of people told me that my iPad was the coolest new technology they saw at the conference.
In the beginning montage, you’ll see a brief shot of me working with my iPad. Then Heike Jagode, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee, talks with Jack Dongarra about exascale software. After that, Stuttgart Supercomputing Chief Michael Resch gives his views on the conference. Later on, from Professor Thom Dunning from NCSA shows off the …
The Rich Report: Five Minutes with Cray’s CTO, Steve Scott
Now that ISC has turned 25 and I’m seeing all these familiar faces, I’ve been getting a little nostalgic for the Old Cray Days. And as I look around the show floor at all this capitalism going on, I think about how it all goes back to Seymour Cray, the guy who created the supercomputer industry. So this week it was a great pleasure for me to meet with Cray CTO, Steve Scott.
Here’s a peak at something Steve said in our conversation: for more, read the full interview.
“If you go back and look at not the first peak number or linpack result, but the first sustained application Gigaflop, Teraflop, and Petaflop, they were all on Crays. So the first sustained application Gigaflop was on a …
