The computational power of today’s high-end supercomputers has led to transformative advances in atmospheric forecasting. Using the TACC Ranger system, Scripps’ Masao Kanamitsu uses a process called downscaling to improve regional predictions. The technique takes output from the global climate model and adds information at smaller scales to improve the forecasts. We’re finding that downscaling works […]
Archives for February 2011
Sponsored Post: CIO Cloud Summit, June 15-16, Scottsdale, AZ
February 28, 2011 by
The CIO Cloud Summit, June 14-16, 2011, is an opportunity for CIOs and IT executives from multiple industries to explore critical cloud computing issues, connect with other executives in various stages of cloud computing projects, and learn about the latest cloud computing solutions. The technology event will allow attendees to build relationships with IT executive […]
Video: 2011 Reader Survey Reveals Global Reach of insideHPC
February 28, 2011 by
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXeWf26QyOU In the this slidecast, insideHPC President Rich Brueckner interviews Media Strategist Mike Bernhardt about findings from the 2011 insideHPC Reader Survey. We had an overwhelming response and I would like to thank you all for your input as we strive to improve our publication and broaden our global reach. As for the results in […]
SeaMicro Drops 64-bit Atom Bomb Server
February 28, 2011 by
By Timothy Prickett Morgan • Get more from this author
If SeaMicro has been “awash in business” as company founder, Andrew Feldman, tells El Reg it has been in the wake of last June’s launch of the 512-core, 10U Atom-based SM10000 server, then the company had better batten down the hatches and prepare for the deluge. Because today SeaMicro is shipping the second generation of its ultra-dense integrated server/switch/load balancing platform based on a 64-bit version of Intel’s Atom processors.
As El Reg reported last summer when SeaMicro came out of stealth mode, the company had put together a very clever and compact server based on 32-bit, single-core Atom Z530 processors. The SM10000 put eight of these Atom Z530 processors and their chipsets on a single card, with SeaMicro’s homegrown ASICs for creating a proprietary chassis backplane linking the server nodes to in-chassis Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches in the back of the chassis, disk drives and controllers in the front of the chassis, and a load balancer for managing traffic across the networks and fabric lashing it all together.
Cramming 512 cores of any kind into a 10U space along with storage and networking to support those nodes is not an easy task, no matter what chip architecture you are using. But Gary Lauterbach, a chip designer who used to work for Advanced Micro Devices who also designed the former Sun Microsystems UltraSparc-III and UltraSparc-IV processors, put together a team of engineers from AMD, Cisco Systems, Force10 Networks, Juniper Networks, and Sun Microsystems to get it done. Feldman, who used to run marketing at Force10, is SeaMicro’s chief executive officer and is an evangelist for compact systems that can do hyperscale work, but do so more efficiently than standard x64-based machines.
Cash Prizes: Enterprise Deployments for OpenFabrics Contest
February 28, 2011 by
Today the OpenFabrics Alliance announced a new contest to look at deployments of its OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) open-source software in high-performance networking applications. All end users of OFED are encouraged to enter the “Most Interesting OFED Deployment” contest to be eligible to win cash prizes. The contest runs through April 1, 2011 and winners […]
Nvidia Seeks to Broaden Developer Adoption with CUDA Toolkit 4.0 RC
February 28, 2011 by
Today Nvidia announced that CUDA Toolkit 4.0 Release Candidate will be available to registered developers starting March 4th. Designed to help increase developer adoption of CUDA, the new release centers around three new features: Faster Multi-GPU Programming with GPUDirect 2.0: New facility provides developers with peer-to-peer memory access, transfers & synchronization. MPI implementations natively support […]
Video: NCSA Taps LSI for Dark Energy Survey
February 28, 2011 by
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5UF3qE7rgM In this video, NCSA researchers employ innovative IO technology from LSI in the Dark Energy Survey, which seeks to answer one of the most fundamental questions in astrophysics today; Why is the expansion of the universe speeding up? NCSA provides data management for Dark Energy Survey that will collect digital data from astronomical observations […]
HipHaC'11 Publishes HPC Proceedings as Free Download
February 28, 2011 by
The Second International Workshop on New Frontiers in High-performance and Hardware-aware Computing (HipHaC’11) has published their proceedings as a free download. The event took place February 13, 2011 in San Antonio, Texas. This workshop aims at combining new aspects of parallel, heterogeneous, and reconfigurable microprocessor technologies with concepts of high-performance computing and, particularly, numerical solution […]
Video: Simulation of Magnetic Fields in a Sun-like Star
February 27, 2011 by
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_1Ctnp5MrI Our Video Sunday feature continues with this simulation of a young, Sun-like star undergoing a cyclic reversal of its magnetic fields. This simulated star is rotating five times faster than our Sun. A team led by Juri Toomre from the University of Colorado is using Kraken, a Cray XT5 supercomputer, to simulate a Sun-like […]
UCLA Deploys Shipping Container HPC
February 26, 2011 by
HP’s Marc Hamilton blogs about a new container-based datacenter at UCLA. As an alternative to building a new building to house new HPC compute resources, the university elected to deploy the HP POD in a parking lot behind the famous Royce Performance Hall. UCLA will be using the POD to house high performance computing systems […]
