Appro is one of the market leaders in HPC cluster solutions, and this acquisition is another step forward as we continue to transform Cray into a company that provides world-class offerings to customers across all segments of the supercomputing market, including Big Data,” said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. “I look forward to welcoming all our new Cray colleagues in this exciting moment for our company — positioning us well for accelerated growth into the future.”

In this special RichReport Podcast, Pete Ungaro discusses the Appro acquisition on the company’s quarterly earnings call. Read the Full Story or check out the Cray 3Q2012 earnings call transcript.

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The post Podcast: Cray to Acquire Appro appeared first on insideHPC.

Dahlia Lounge—Cuisine:Asian Influenced North- west: 2001 Fourth Ave. (Virginia St.) Seattle, WA 98121 206-682-4142

This 20+year veteran of the Seattle scene is still going strong with a super-loyal local following that mixes with out-of-town foodies looking for a unique Seattle experience. Chef Tom Douglas will take you on a culinary journey using Asian ingredients and tech- niques along with the freshest Northwest offerings. All of this in a sophisticated, yet comfort- able urban-chic dining room with professional, informed and unstuffy service. Don’t miss the raw bar, the crab cakes and a chance to see why salmon is king in the world of Cascadia cuisine. Certainly do not leave without having something sweet from one of the most expertly de- signed dessert menus in town.

Le Pichet—French Cuisine 1933 First Ave. (Virginia St.) Seattle, WA 98101 206-256-1499

Take a trip to Paris without leaving this fair city by stop- ping by the gorgeous, yet simply designed bistro. Named after the vesicles by which you can (and should) order expertly chosen wine from a value-based list, this long time Belltown favorite is for the Francophile in all of us. Choose from a number of crisp, properly dressed, seasonal salads and a charcuterie plate, then move on to perhaps the best chicken dish in Seattle—a whole bird perfectly roasted to order for two. Of course, the French love their desserts and Le Pichet delivers not only the classics like chocolate mousse and crème brulee but other nicely done modern takes as well.

Matt’s in the Market—Local, Seasonal NW Cuisine 94 Pike St # 32 Seattle, WA 98101-2066 (206) 467-7909

Located on the 3rd floor of the Corner Market Building in the world famous Pike Place Market, this simply, yet tastefully de- signed restaurant offers spectac- ular views of the Puget Sound. With the market directly

across the street the chef and his staff have access to an amaz- ing bounty of the freshest local ingredients. Try the absurdly flavorful pork belly or grilled octopus then have anything involving the always fresh fish or a locally sourced lamb dish. It is every chef’s dream to not have to get in a truck to find the fresh- est, most local of ingredients and even more of a dream to have an endless supply right at your doorstep—Matt’s makes this a dream come true.

“Start with the wicked shrimp, have the tuxedoed waiters make you a before-your-eyes caeser, then experience a table-side carved Chateubriand…”

El Gaucho—Steakhouse 2505 First Ave. (Wall St.)Seattle, WA 98121 206-728-1337

The restaurant to see local sports celebrities, broker a multi-million dollar deal or plain just be seen, El Gaucho is a Seattle institution for movers and shakers. Step back in time in this ultra swank, darkly lit supper club style restaurant and re-live the glory days. Steak, of course, is star of the show here and the 28 day dry-aged, hand picked, Mid-West prime beef does not disappoint. Start with the wicked shrimp, have the tux- edoed waiters make you a before- your-eyes caeser then experience a table-side carved Chateubriand and finish with Bananas Foster. With live Latin music nightly, a happening bar scene and a well- dressed crowd, you’ll feel like Frank and Dean could walk in at any moment.

Wild Ginger—Modern Pan-Asian 1401 3rd Ave Seattle, WA 98101 206-623-450

Wild Ginger has been around since 1989—an eon in restaurant years—and in it’s current stunningly beautiful digs for the past 11 years. A certain testament to the fantastic job the kitchen has been doing over this span in serving up perfectly executed Pan- Asian cuisine that takes advantage of the local access to Asian ingredients and the freshness that the local water and land provide. Try the satay bar where you can savor a lovely skewered prawn

or Vietnamese Hawker Beef that comes with various dipping sauces that are superbly paired. Duck, a staple course in Asian cuisine, is rendered grandly here with crispy skin enveloping the smoky, gamy meat inside. Dungeness crab, a Northwest staple, is also prepared magnificently and served with

a black bean sauce, ginger and chiles that will take you on a tour of Southeast Asia in one dish. 22 years in the business and Wild Ginger’s atmosphere, food and service have only seemed to got- ten better over time—a remark- able feat.

Salumi—Artisan Cured Meats 309 Third Ave South Seattle, WA 98104 206-621-8772

This cured meats (salumi) shop run by Armandino Batali—yes, father of star Chef Mario—in Pioneer Square is a closet of a restaurant/deli that has a very NYish feel.

Mr. Batali cures all meats in- house and serves other more entrée like items including a to-die-for porchetta lasagna or an excellent wild mushroom gnocchi. Sit down at the long communal table and rub el- bows with local business people, tourists and hipsters and have a glass of excellent, inexpensive wine poured in a juice glass. If that is too cozy, the line for to go sandwiches–while often long– moves rather quickly and is more than worth the wait to have some of this wildly popular establishments homey, yet fantastic fare.

Reprinted from the Print’nFly Guide to SC11 Seattle, an in-flight magazine custom-tailored for your trip to the biggest Supercomputing conference ever. Download the PDF (15 Mbytes). If your IT crowd blocks Dropbox, please Download here.

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The post Get Hungry – Seattle Recommendations from a Local Foodie appeared first on insideHPC.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

When a popular piece of software like Grid Engine goes open source, it sometimes becomes a challenge to determine how many users are out there. With that in mind, insideHPC is looking for Grid Engine users. We suspect that a number of our readers use Grid Engine, so please help us out with this quick survey. No strings attached. Thanks!

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Why doesn’t the HPC industry grow more? While HPC has certainly had its booms and busts, hardly a conference, panel or roundtable goes by without the issue of frustrated industry growth rolling down the aisle. Some estimates put the industry’s growth at a paltry 5% annual average between 1999 – 2009.ⁱ While there’s no shortage of speculation as to the cause, perhaps it’s auspicious timing that Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen has been slated to deliver the keynote address at SC10 in New Orleans next month. He is, after all, the Yoda of disruptive innovation.

It turns out, not all innovation is created equal. In Christensen parlance, innovation is either “sustaining” or “disruptive,” with differing growth consequences to be expected in each case. The challenge for HPC is that, by its very nature, the industry tends to disproportionately favor sustaining innovation rather than disruptive. This, in turn, systemically holds back the full growth potential of HPC.

It’s hard to be a customer = Low industry growth

For an industry to grow its overall revenue (i.e. size) there must be more deals, larger deals, or both. Price x Quantity. Another way to frame this is in terms of “cost” and “access.” In the case of HPC, “cost” relates to the towering financial thresholds that customers must cross before they can even consider an HPC system. “Access” relates to the elite knowledge, skill and sophistication that customers must also possess in order to run, maintain and benefit from HPC solutions. Unless the HPC industry profoundly lowers costs or increases access (or both), there simply won’t be enough customers who can utilize HPC – and industry growth will suffer.

Sustaining Innovation = Higher Cost x Lower Access

With that in mind, there is also a dangerous myth that innovation inevitably lowers cost, and that costs reliably decline in a competitive market. As captured by Christensen in The Innovator’s Prescription, “sustaining” innovations – favored by HPC – tend to preserve or increase costs. Meanwhile “disruptive” innovations tend to bring costs down.ⁱⁱⁱ

“Sustaining” innovations are defined by offering better performance in mainstream markets. For example, in 1976 radiographs (x-rays) cost upwards of US$200K and were sold by fierce global competitors such as General Electric, Siemens, Philips, Hitachi and Toshiba. In the struggle for market share, each competitor routinely came out with ingenious sustaining innovations year after year. Higher image resolutions, 3D and finer scanning sensitivities were delivered as x-ray technologies evolved into what is now computed tomography (CAT-scans).

Through such sustaining innovations General Electric, Siemens, Philips, and others could justify more than $400K for scanners in the mid-1980s, and upwards of $1 million for new scanners today. The technology got better, which is why prices remained high.

Like radiography, HPC has been prone to sustaining innovation. This is because, almost by definition, HPC exists to push the bleeding edge of ever-higher performance. For example, in 1984 it cost around $15 million for a Cray X-MP/48 with a theoretical peak performance of over 800 MFLOPS. Twenty-three years of breathtaking HPC innovation later, IBM’s Roadrunner broke the petaFLOPS barrier with systems costing upwards of $50-$60 million. While several price-per-performance ratios improved, the sticker shock increased more than three-to-four-fold and systems grew increasingly complex; daunting hurdles for many would-be customers.

Disruptive Innovation = Lower Cost x Higher Access

Unlike “sustaining” innovations, “disruptive” innovations tend to bring costs down. Rather than delivering higher performance to mainstream markets, disruptive innovations often target lower cost solutions that are “good enough” for a sub-segment of the market, but lower performing than the alternatives. They can also be solutions designed to specifically allow the less skilled or less wealthy to do what was previously done only by those with greater skill or resources.

For example, Complete Genomics is a service that sequences human genomes for medical research. The first-ever human genome took around 13 years and $3 billion to sequence in 2003, whereas today Complete Genomics offers highly automated, HPC-driven sequencing for only $5K per genome. While Complete Genomics offers a relatively limited set of analyses compared with more sophisticated wet labs, it is allowing a large population of less sophisticated medical researchers to begin analyzing genomic data in a manner that was previously beyond their means and expertise. HPC is making genomics more accessible and lowering costs.

Similarly, Linux and other open source tools have long had a disruptive impact on HPC. While not historically as high performance as incumbent solutions (such as proprietary Unix-based systems), the openness, accessibility and dramatically lower cost of Linux allowed it to enter from below and gradually increase performance over time. By doing so it has not only taken share from existing competitors, but it has also expanded the overall market for high-end systems. Lower cost, more access, more industry growth.

Past ≠ Future

This is not to say that sustaining innovation isn’t important. For the record, it is important. It is also not to say that HPC is never disruptive – the Complete Genomics and Linux examples show HPC can be disruptive (both in terms of end-user applications and the core HPC technology itself). Rather, the message here is that different types of innovation tend to produce different effects on firm and industry growth. One has a tendency to be exclusive, whereas the other tends to be inclusive.

Neither sustaining nor disruptive innovation are easy. Yet the HPC industry is nothing if not outstanding at the sustaining type; after all, on average HPC performance increases by two orders of magnitude every decade. This is not the primary holdup. Rather, perhaps it is time to ask how HPC can become more disruptive.

How can HPC tools more deliberately enable lower cost and greater access solutions?

How can HPC allow large populations of less skilled customers with fewer resources to begin doing what was previously only done by those with greater skill and wealth?

These are the new design challenges that HPC firms, the Titans of sustaining innovation, must wrap their heads around if they are serious about growth. It’s time to re-balance the equation.

About the author: Thomas Thurston is a renowned thought leader in specialized bodies of corporate strategy and investment methodology. He is currently President and Managing Director of Growth Science International.

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The post Why The HPC Growth Equation Hasn’t Added Up appeared first on insideHPC.