insideHPC » Podcast

Podcast: Deb Goldfarb on The Everyday Impact of HPC

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:00:58 +0000

In this Intel Chip Chat from SC11, Intel’s Debra Goldfarb describes how high performance computing touches our daily lives–everything from food production to car designs, weather modeling, and materials sciences. Download the MP3.

Podcast: Opscode Users to Gather for First-Ever #ChefConf Event

Rich Brueckner — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:28:59 +0000

In this podcast, Jesse Robbins from OpsCode talks about the new #ChefConf event coming up May 15-17, 2012 in San Francisco. The event will bring together hundreds of users of Chef, an open-source systems integration framework built specifically for automating the cloud.

Tens of thousands of people and thousands of companies use Opscode Chef to automate, manage and scale their infrastructure,” said Jesse Robbins, co-chair of #ChefConf, and co-founder and chief community officer of Opscode. “This ability is now a critical skill for every software developer, systems engineer and IT professional who must manage ever-increasing scale and complexity.”

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Podcast: Turning Up Performance Profiling with Intel VTune Amplifier XE

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:00:07 +0000

In this Intel Chip Chat podcast, Allyson Klein and Ramesh Peri discuss developments and benefits of Intel Vtune Amplifier XE, a performance analysis tool for checking app performance on Intel processors. Download the MP3.

Slidecast: APAX Application Acceleration from Samplify

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:07:10 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDGuyHDVvA0

In this slidecast, Allan Evans and Al Wegener present: APAX Application Acceleration. Samplify Systems is leveraging their advanced compression algorithms to reduce the amount of data that needs to be moved and stored in high performance computing. Read the Full Story.

Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * Subscribe on other podcast players. If your IT Crowd blocks Dropbox, you can download the audio from this Google page.

Slidecast: Wildpackets – Network Forensics 101

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:02:15 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NlEldJ_GV0

In this slidecast, Jay Botelho from Wildpackets describes how network forensics works and how the company’s provides enterprise-wide network monitoring and reporting.

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If your IT crowd blocks Dropbox, you can also Download the MP3 from The Google.

Video: Puppet Labs Datacenter Automation

Rich Brueckner — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:00:59 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVfk2Czae1c

In this video, Luke Kanies of Puppet Labs describes the company’s datacenter automation and configuration management tool..

Puppet Labs’ IT automation software enables system administrators to deliver the operational agility and efficiency of cloud computing at enterprise-class service levels, scaling from handfuls of nodes on-premise to tens of thousands in the cloud. Puppet powers thousands of companies, including Twitter, Yelp, eBay, Zynga, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Google, Disney, Citrix, Oracle, and Viacom.

Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * Subscribe on other podcast players. If your IT Crowd blocks Dropbox, you can download from this Google page.

Podcast: Interview with Dr. Bernd Mohr on the ISC’s Popular Crash Course on HPC

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:37:52 +0000

In this podcast, I interview Dr. Bernd Mohr from the Jülich Supercomputer Center. Every year at the ISC International Supercomputing Conference in Germany, Dr. Mohr conducts a popular half-day Crash Course on High Performance Computing to help familiarize conference attendees with all the terminology we bat around here in supercomputing circles.

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If your IT crowd blocks Dropbox, you can also Download the MP3 from The Google.

Slidecast: IPSoft Overview – Autonomic IT Management

Rich Brueckner — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:11:44 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDtcPm6rrqs

In this video, Jonathan Crane presents: IPSoft Overview - Autonomic IT Management. Learn more at: http://ipsoft.com

The IT infrastructure of tomorrow will not be managed by people, but by expert systems.

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Slidecast: Versant JPA Technical Preview Tailor-Made for Big Data

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:31:09 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKu2ItgOH_g

In this video, Dirk Bartels from Versant presents: JPA Technical Preview.

The Java Persistence API is a Java programming language framework managing relational data in applications using Java Standard Edition and Java Enterprise Edition. To maximize performance, the Versant JPA has native object persistence API and storage specifically designed for Big Data and Analytics. As a technical preview for developers, the Versant JPA is now available for download.

Every database can store simple rows; many can do that fast. Every database can retrieve simple rows; many can do that fast. But … The world is not made of simple rows. The world is complex and so are real world applications and their data models. Trying to break complex scenarios into simple rows and columns will either result in a tremendous amount of code, or the result will suffer from performance issues (or both). With Versant Object Database (VOD) one can store and retrieve complex objects instead of simple rows. And, one can do that really fast. So for complex scenarios, it is clearly the better choice.

But wait…Why, then, doesn’t everybody use VOD? And here we had a problem: Everybody (not really everybody, but you get the point) speaks SQL. Java developers speak JPA. Nobody (again not literally) speaks JVI (I guess, most of you don’t even know what JVI means). Therefore, we’re making it easy for Java developers to talk to VOD in their language: JPA.

Read the Full Story.

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Slidecast: MCOpt – Intelligent Resource Management from eXludus

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:00:24 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlbX7HtqjaQ

In this slidecast, Dale Geldart from eXludus presents: MCOpt - Intelligent Resource Management.

eXludus’ MCOPt is based upon operational research principles and advanced math techniques, not dissimilar from queuing theory techniques used within large scale traffic management problems. MCOPt dynamically and continuously creates an optimal processing schedule for applications such that resource utilization is maximized and the risk of resource conflict or interference is minimized.

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Slidecast: Clustered Systems Introduces Remarkable 100KW Compute Rack

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:26:23 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVARFEMEX9U

In this slidecast, Phil Hughes from Clustered Systems presents: The 100KW Rack Introduction. Using a grant from the US Dept. of Energy, the company has developed a highly dense compute rack with a PCI-E interconnect and an extremely efficient warm-water cooling system.

The company estimates that a completely operational Petaflop compute facility using the new technology could be built for approximately $20 Million USD. To be available through OEM partners, first shipments will likely start in 2Q2012, and SLAC will deploy the first system.

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Podcast: Is There a Moore’s Law for Energy Efficiency?

Rich Brueckner — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:00:18 +0000

In this IEEE podcast, Stanford’s Jonathan Koomey discusses his recent paper looking at the Moore’s Law–like exponential progress in the energy efficiency of computers over the past six decades.

So, if these trends continue—and my friends at Intel say that they have at least another 10 years of these performance and efficiency trends improving—if they continue, they basically bode well for the increased sophistication and lower-power use of mobile computing centers and controls. So doubling every year and a half means over the course of 10 years, the efficiency of computers will go up by a factor of 100. So that means that we will have the ability to have more and more mobile centers that use less and less power to collect information and also to bring it back to some wireless base station. The people who are doing the most interesting work now are focused on ultralow power computing that was never before possible. And so Josh Smith, who’s at Intel and also the University of Washington, is working with mobile centers that have no power source. No battery. They use the power from stray television and radio signals to power themselves. And that means that you’re free from the constraint of having to have a power source.

Read the Full Transcript.

RCE Podcast: XSEDE Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment

Ralph — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:58:51 +0000

Clipped from: www.rce-cast.com (share this clip)

In this RCE podcast, Brock Palen and Jeff Squyres speak withPhil Blood of the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center (PSC) about XSEDE the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment.

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Slidecast: PerfectSearch – Big Data Search

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:00:43 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_6BpRQ1fOY

In this slidecast, Tim Stay from PerfectSearch describes the company’s ultra-efficient search appliance software that is tailor-made for Big Data.

PerfectSearch’s patented software enables search up to a billion documents using a single private cloud appliance. Compared to other solutions that can require more than 10 times the number of servers, the PerfectSearch powered by Fujitsu solution is powerful and economical—even compared to open-source solutions, with lower equipment cost and fewer servers that reduce energy, replacement and administrative costs. Companies now have a cost-effective solution to index and search all content is searchable with a single query. The PerfectSearch powered by Fujitsu appliance uses unique technology that uses disk based indexing rather than memory, requiring a fraction of the hardware—realizing up to a 90% reduction in search-related hardware. These innovations built into the solution permit high-speed retrieval, drastically reduced hardware footprints, and extensive customization.

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Slidecast: Eurocom – High Performance Mobile Workstations & Mobile Servers

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:11:28 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaogUs8bvsE

In this slidecast, Mark Bialic from Eurocom presents: High Performance Mobile Workstations & Mobile Servers.

Engineering on the go represents the reality of many of today’s professionals,” says Mark Bialic, president of Eurocom. He notes that security was a primary justification for the concept. “Many of our customers on a distant project can’t trust that they’re protecting their intellectual property. They can’t have that confidence using a local system or network.”

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Secrets and Solutions From a Reformed Benchmarketer

Rich Brueckner — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:39:29 +0000

By Dan Olds, Gabriel Consulting • Get more from this author

At SC11 I ran into Henry Newman, CEO of HPC consulting firm Instrumental Inc. After exchanging the usual pleasantries and deeply offensive personal insults, we got to talking about some of the recently released benchmark results – and how irrelevant most of them are to the real world.

In the course of the conversation, Henry told me that he was once a “slimy benchmarker”. He told me about some of the tricks that vendor benchmarkers use to make sure their systems shine brightly in customer bake-offs. Basically, if a particular trick (special tuning, hardware, etc.) “isn’t clearly and explicitly banned by the customer, then it’s fair game.”

I get the feeling that back in the day, Henry was a particularly savage and merciless benchmarker with a pretty good win/loss record. But now that he’s on the customer side of the industry, Henry has a different point of view, and wants to become part of the solution to the benchmarking problem (which he helped promulgate, damn it.)

Toward that end, he’s spent a lot of time working on a project with DARPA to develop a set of benchmarks that get to the heart of what customers really need to know: how well systems scale from small to large.

In the webcast we talk about all of the above topics, drill down into specific scalability benchmarks, and give Henry a chance to confess his benchmarking sins. Give it a listen…

This article originally appeared in The Register. It appears here in its entirety as part of a cross-publishing agreement.

Slidecast: Adaptive Computing: Intelligent Workload Management

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:25:14 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA_E7FX6IV8

In this slidecast video, Brady Kimball and Ken Nielson from Adaptive Computing present: Intelligent Workload Management. The company recently released version 4.0 of their Torque Workload Manager, and Nielson describes the new features of the software.

Adaptive Computing HPC products power a range of intelligent solutions and use cases that create a self-optimizing and dynamic HPC environment that is able to adapt and process more workload in less time with existing resources and less management overhead. A summary of some of those key solutions and use cases are below with a link to the product that enables the solution so you can learn more and evaluate the solution for your organization.

Read the Full Story.

Podcast: Jen-Hsun Huang Press Conference from the GTC Conference in Beijing

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:50:35 +0000

In this podcast, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang describes the convergence of HPC and consumer market technologies on the road to Exascale computing. Recorded at the GPU Technology Conference in Beijing on Dec. 14, 2011.

Questions:

Will heterogeneous computing be extended to your Tegra handset technology?
What is your take on the ARM architecture for HPC?
What is your take on the low-cost smartphone market?
The line between general computing and graphics has become blurred. You have been riding this trend since the G80 device. I’m wondering, how did you foresee this trend? Was it through your relationship with Microsoft?
When do you plan to release Denver and Kepler?
What was the name of the Chinese video game that was demoed in the keynote?
So we have lightweight CPU kernels and we have efficient graphic kernels. Do you think this combination is sufficient to get to Exascale?
Do you still play table tennis?
Can you comment on rumors of development delays of Windows on Tegra ARM platforms?
What do you think of the Intel MIC architecture?
Are you working toward a completely shared memory between CPU and GPU?
Could you tell us your strategy for the HPC area?
It sounds like the Tesla business is not big enough to support the required R&D to support the R&D investment. What is the future plan to remedy this?
This GTC conference is nearly the size of the event in the U.S. Do you expect to bring the event back to China? If so, what do you think the impact will be on the Chinese HPC market?
Are you slowing down your desktop device development in favor of mobile devices?
The #1 system today is the K computer, which does not use GPUs. Do you think that the top systems in 10 years time will all be hybrid systems using GPUs?
ARM is reportedly developing a GPU. What do you think the impact of that will be on Nvidia’s business?
Many researchers do not want to have to rewrite their code to take advantage of GPUs. How do you plan to help them?
For the digital media market, do you foresee real-time rendering in the Cloud?
You build GPUs, but can you do what Intel does, which is basically Tic-Toc, Tic-Toc and build a new high-end GPU each year?
Do you see an opportunity in the market with the advent of the new UltraBook computers?
How is your business split between desktop and laptop?

I edited this recording so that it is all in English, but I think this is a fascinating discussion for people seeking a better understanding on Nvidia’s business model and how it all fits together with high performance computing. The press corps here in Beijing is mostly consumer technology reporters from the region and Jen-Hsun did a great job of putting HPC in the perspective of the China’s rise as a technology-centric consumer economy.

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If your IT Crowd blocks Dropbox, you can download from The Google.

Video: Texas Memory Systems Rolls Out High-Availability RamSan-720 Storage

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:45:48 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBr7C7_EUT0

In this video, Eric Eyberg from Texas Memory Systems describes the company’s new RamSan-720 Solid-State storage system, which sets new standards for speed and high-availability. After that, CEO Holly Frost discusses how the storage industry has evolved over the last 30 years. Read the Full Story.

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Podcast: Hybrid Memory Cube Technology to Boost Bandwidth and Density

Rich Brueckner — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:15:38 +0000

In this podcast, Scott Graham from Micron describes the new Hybrid Memory Cube technology under development by a consortium of technology companies.

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