insideHPC » Radio Free HPC

Podcast: Radio Free HPC Interviews Jack Dongarra on the New TOP500

Rich Brueckner — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:21:59 +0000

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses the June 2013 TOP500 list with Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee. How did the Chinese manage to trump the world once again with the #1 supercomputer on the planet? Listen in to find out.

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Radio Free HPC Looks at Why You Gotta Own Your Own Archive, Part 1

Rich Brueckner — Fri, 31 May 2013 11:00:11 +0000

In Part 1 of this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the importance of owning your own archive of enterprise data.

The discussion was prompted by Henry Newman’s presentation entitled: Today’s I/O Challenges for Big Data Analysis from the recent HPC User Forum in Tucson.

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You can catch Part 2 of this podcast over at inside Big Data.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Looks at Holographic Storage

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 28 May 2013 20:12:21 +0000

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team takes a look at pending holographic storage technology.

Henry Newman’s head is still spinning from the technology previews he saw at the recent IEEE Mass Data Storage Conference. Could this be a game-changer for the tape industry and archiving data? What are the specs, limitations, and most importantly, are these the droids we’ve been looking for?

View the Hitachi Slides * View the Akonia Holographics Slides * Download the MP3 * Download the mobile video * Download 1024p Video * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

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Radio Free HPC Fireside Chat – HPC Embraces Big Data

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:01:55 +0000

In this slidecast, the Radio Free HPC team interviews Fritz Ferstl, CTO of Univa. Topics include Big Data, HPC, and the continuing convergence of both.

While what we think of as traditional HPC may differ greatly from Big Data analytics, that seems to be changing. With a long history in high performance computing and customers in both worlds, Ferstl shares his unique perspective on where the two worlds overlap and where the potential is greatest for synergy in the future.

This has to be our best show yet, so be sure to check it out.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC on GPU-Direct RDMA

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:30:38 +0000

In this follow-up podcast to the GPU Technology Conference, the Radio Free HPC team mulls over a talk by GE’s Dustin Franklin, GPU app specialist. Dustin’s topic was GPU-direct RDMA; was this a first look at real-world RDMA with GPU-to-GPU communications?

Follow along as the guys describe flow charts on technical slides that are not yet approved by viewing for the “great unwashed masses” – but make no mistake, they’re impressed by what they saw. Dan “knows a guy” who can divulge more, and offers to arrange an inquisition with Henry. Henry promised to “be nice,” whatever he means by that. Rich missed this GTC session and several others while “conducting interviews,” whatever he means by that. Dan offers another characterization. And this just in: there’s a great deal of information available on the Internet.

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View the GE Presentation Slides on Slideshare or check out the excellent coverage by Timothy Prickett Morgan over at The Register.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Looks at FPGAs

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:47:45 +0000

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses the recent buzz surrounding FGPAs. After being sidelined by accelerators, they’re increasingly being used in appliances.

Big vendors are talking about FPGAs not only for appliances but for general-purpose systems as performance assists. Are we headed back to the future? The guys discuss the ins and outs of FPGAs and why, in some cases, they could be a huge win for the organizations that implement them. But is the architecture flexible enough? For enterprise and Big Data, perhaps it is. If you need to perform the same algorithms over and over again, FPGAs could be a perfect fit. As with all things tech, there are a few cautionary notes to be sounded. Amassing more and more appliances can lead down a tricky road. Will their use in workload-optimized systems lead to vendor lock-in? Can you really teach an old FPGA new tricks? And can they be weaponized?

Most importantly: how are servers like cattle? Tune in to find out…

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Radio Free HPC on the First Rule of Exacale: Do Not Talk about Exascale

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:30:36 +0000

In this episode of Radio Free HPC, the topic of Exascale is under the hosts’ scrutiny once again as they discuss some interesting stories released by The Exascale Report featuring opinion by Bill Gropp of NCSA and Bill Harrod of DOE.

Rule #1: You do not talk about Exascale. (Kind of like rule #1 of Fight Club, except the guys keep breaking it.) Why not? Because too many of the people talking about Exascale are having the wrong conversation about it.

What should the conversation be? Should it be about the systems themselves, or about the work that can be done only with those systems — the science that we can’t yet do? Spoiler alert: Dan and Henry disagree on this. But a peaceful vibe reigns once again as they discuss what The Exascale Report calls “The Three Noble Truths” of Exascale, which sounds kind of Zen and cool — as if it was coined by Exascale Samurai.

And finally… is it time to talk about Zetta-scale?

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Looks at Success and Failure in the Tech Industry

Rich Brueckner — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:21:46 +0000

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at success factors for technology Startups. Prompted by a recent interview with Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolshiem, the discussion centers around lessons learned from Sun’s decline and eventual acquisition by Oracle.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Looks at the Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:04:39 +0000

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team is still talking about the recently concluded SC12 conference in Salt Lake City. The conversation starts with a short review of Thanksgiving dinner (including disgusting eating noises added in at no additional charge) before moving on to more weighty topics such as Intel’s formal introduction of their Xeon Phi coprocessor, including some performance and price information.

Rich and Henry think that Intel has a strong hand with Phi, but Dan isn’t so sure…

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Team Exchanges High Performance Gifts

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 11:00:51 +0000

In Part 1 of this special Holiday podcast, Dan and Henry discuss the perfect Christmas gift for Rich Brueckner, who is a bit of an Apple enthusiast.

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In Part 2 of this special Holiday podcast, Rich and Dan discuss the perfect Christmas gift for Henry Newman, a man who some consider to be wound a little too tightly at times.

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In Part 3 of this special Holiday podcast, Rich and Henry discuss the perfect Christmas gift for Dan Olds, a curmudgeon of the highest order.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Reviews the SC12 Student Cluster Competition

Rich Brueckner — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 12:00:38 +0000

In this wrap-up review of SC12, the Radio Free HPC team discusses the Student Cluster Competition, covering the teams, results, and a discussion of how the competition has evolved over the years and where it should go in the future.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Looks at the Chink in TOP500 Armor

Rich Brueckner — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:30:35 +0000

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team quits griping about the horrible WiFi at SC12 and moves on to a truly big issue: Are LINPACK and HPCC benchmarks useful? Should they be constantly re-evaluated? And shouldn’t you really test machines on the kinds of workloads they’re designed to run?

The catalyst for this discussion is the Blue Waters system, for which no LINPACK numbers have been submitted. Yes, it’s behind schedule, and sure, they’re busy doing the science… but is it also a shot across the bow? Are they rebelling against industry philosophy? If they are, that’s a good thing, according to Henry – because a system is about what you plan to do with it, not how many flops you can get out of it. Rich agrees: if you get a giant LINPACK number on a system that has reliability issues, and you can’t output real science because all your time and money is invested in brute computation, what good is it? And the industry sectors doing meaningful work – where are their systems on the Top500? They’re not playing this game.

Spoiler alert: Henry agrees with Dan on something. Really. It’s at the 10:00 mark, if you’ve got to see it to believe it. We hardly believed it ourselves.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC looks at Consolidation in the Supercomputing Industry

Rich Brueckner — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:10:28 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSiF8L9QFcI

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team regroups after SC12 to discuss an industry trend that was in evidence at the show: vendor consolidation.

Cray just acquired Appro
Intel acquired Qlogic Truescale InfiniBand, Whamcloud, and Cray interconnect IP
IBM bought Platform
Xyratex bought ClusterStor
Hitachi acquired BlueArc
NetApp bought Engenio storage
And so on…

The guys discuss how acquisitions need to be integrated the ‘right’ way and how it’s more than just slapping up new logos on websites and combining slide decks. They also talk about some cautionary tales in the world of tech acquisitions along with some success stories. Dan offers a success story: IBM and Platform. Rich predicts which major vendor will next be swallowed whole; Henry predicts a challenge to Intel’s x86 dominance.

In “SC After Hours” chatter, Dan describes “My Dinner With Henry” in Salt Lake City, and Rich is accused of being the biggest Apple fanboi in all of HPC and, perhaps, the world. Watch for a special cameo appearance by someone who knows all about buyouts: Larry Ellison.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Previews SC12

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:18:58 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxvgeCRs5o8

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses what they’re expecting to see at this week’s SC12 conference in Salt Lake City. Get the scoop on what’s new, what’s old, and what’s just plain played out.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Melts Amazon’s Glacier

Rich Brueckner — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:15:55 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY5sa7TKX7Y

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team takes a look at Glacier, Amazon’s cloud archive and backup offering.

Amazon is pitching Glacier as a solution for customers who don’t need frequent access to their data and can handle retrieval times of several hours. The big enticements are low, low cost — as little as a penny per gigabyte per month — and durability. Dan and Henry weed through each facet of Amazon’s marketing claims and — well — rip each one to shreds. Henry thinks this is aimed at the unsuspecting/unfortunate home or small business consumer, as anyone with technology expertise will run far, far away from Glacier. Dan compares it to the “Roach Motel” of storage: once you’re in, you can never get out. And don’t even get them started on the definition of “durable.”

Viewer tip: keep an eye on the “consecutive hours awake” timer at the bottom of the screen.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC on the Future of Tape Storage

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 11:00:01 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lU0Ky68d3c

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at tape storage. Is that parrot completely dead, or is it just resting? Is tape now legacy technology, or is it alive and well? And can’t our data just all go in the cloud anyway? In more ‘legacy’ talk, Dan posits that Henry whittled the first punch cards by hand, and Rich claims that Henry invented the chad. Henry retaliates by claiming to have more hair… a must-see.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC Looks at the Clothesline Paradox

Rich Brueckner — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:00:54 +0000

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team takes a look at the OSCON Open Source Convention, where Tim Tim O’Reilly’s presentation on the “Clothesline Paradox” aptly illustrated the way developers create value. Since many large companies such as Comcast make a living on open-source software, Dan digresses into a string of complaints about his Comcast bill, but Henry and Rich reel in the discussion. Was the Internet created out of generosity, or enlightened self-interest? And we hear again from one of our sponsors: Glade ‘Data Center Edition’ air fresheners.

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By the way, we are seeking a corporate sponsor for this podcast, so please let us know if you’re interested. In the meantime, you can follow the show at RadioFreeHPC.com.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC on the Energy Wall of Exascale

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:06:51 +0000

Power is a major challenge standing in the way of the Exascale computing. While the target is to consume 20 MW or less for an exascale machine, current technology trends will not take us there by 2018. In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses why this is such a tough challenge, where such a system might need to be hosted, and types of infrastructure that will need to be considered. Along the way, you’ll hear scary “power” music and figure out how this all relates to Mad Max, lasers, unicorns, and Planet of the Apes.

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Podcast: Radio Free HPC on the Exascalar Benchmark

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:20:08 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3999I0UDyu0

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses the Exascalar measure/benchmark and what it’s telling us. Exascalar combines Top500 and Green500 data in order to see if the industry is on track to hit the goal of an exascale system that consumes less than 20MW of juice by 2020. Like usual, the conversation takes some interesting turns into how to measure performance, power consumption, and efficiency. For some reason, laptops got added into the mix too.

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By the way, we are seeking a corporate sponsor for this podcast, so please let us know if you’re interested. In the meantime, you can follow the show at RadioFreeHPC.com.

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Podcast: When Big Data Goes Bad – This Week on Radio Free HPC

Rich Brueckner — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 17:19:31 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z4OD92Pz34

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Big Data and analytics. More specifically, the guys talk about a couple of examples of when over-reliance on analytics leads to bad outcomes. The first deals with some high school kids who were allegedly found to be cheating by a plagiarism software program and the second looks at how a major bank may have lost up to $9 billion due to lack of proper controls and blind faith in existing analytic systems.

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