Archives for January 2007

IBM and Softek announced on Monday that IBM has acquired the 140-person data storage company for an undisclosed sum. IBM officials say they want to integrate Softek’s data mobility technology with IBM’s expertise in storage and data services. The companies have been partners since 1996. Storage is another murky backwater in HPC. We’ve spent all […]

From the “Hey, I have some of that same gear” department… SGI issued a release today talking about the additional investment that EFILM has made in SGI gear to support the digital workflow it uses to create movie trailers for Hollywood. To create the SGI SAN to provide high-speed storage and networking to run their […]

OSC issued a press release yesterday announcing that they had upgraded one of their educational clusters. The system is used for both visualization and computation. What’s interesting about the press release is that they go ahead and factor the GPUs in when talking about performance: The updated cluster boasts 55 rack-mounted compute nodes. Each node […]

ClusterMonkey has an interesting case study that examines what kind of cluster your could build today for $2,500 versus what you could do (and what they did) 18 months ago. It’s a little long, but an interesting study in the design tradeoffs that lead to a balanced system at any scale. But more importantly, I’ve […]

via Grid Blog If you’re into this sort of thing, IBM has posted a recommended reading list for grid developers. It includes archival stuff as well as blogs (Ian Foster’s is listed, which I highly recommend).

The Register’s Ashlee Vance reports that Google takes issue with Intel’s claim that Google’s going all Xeon ga-ga. I covered the Intel side yesterday. Ashlee actually talked to someone in the Googleplex: “We bought a small number of chips from Intel recently, but we continue to be supplied by more than one vendor,” spokesman Barry […]

Curious about how it was that a really big technical advance was announced by two separate companies at the same time, over a weekend? Me too! The Register has a really interesting piece on how this all happened. Basically Intel is about a year ahead of IBM, but IBM got wind of Intel’s plans to […]

I’ve been following the Computing Research Association’s coverage of the impact of the government’s failure to pass a 2007 budget. Federal agencies other than DHS and DOD have been under a continuing resolution (a CR) this fiscal year. CR’s are a good thing in that they allow agencies to continue working without a budget, but […]

Evidently Intel’s announcement has churned up lots of interest over the weekend in the press. IBM’s also developed some new materials, but is thought to be farther behind than Intel. From the AP: The problem is that the silicon dioxide used for more than 40 years as an insulator inside transistors has been shaved so […]

Intel announced that it is producing its first 45 nm process prototypes using two new materials Intel is the first to implement an innovative combination of new materials that drastically reduces transistor leakage and increases performance in its 45nm process technology. The company will use a new material with a property called high-k, for the […]