In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Intel’s oneAPI project. “The OneAPI project is a highly ambitious initiative; trying to design a single API to handle CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and other types of processors. In the discussion, we look under the hood and see how this might work. One thing working in Intel’s favor is that they’re using data parallel C++, which is highly compatible with CUDA – and which is probably Intel’s target with this new initiative.”
Case Study: Magseis Fairfield Uses a Sea of Data to Support Environmentally Responsible Energy Exploration
March 17, 2020 by Leave a Comment
This whitepaper contains a compelling HPC data storage solution case study highlighting the use of Panasas ActiveStor® by Magseis Fairfield, a geophysics firm that specializes in providing seismic 3D and 4D data acquisition services to exploration and production (E&P) companies. The whitepaper, “Magseis Fairfield Uses a Sea of Data to Support Environmentally Responsible Energy Exploration,” […]
SQream teams with StorONE for High Performance Data Analytics
March 13, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Today StorONE announced a joint solution with SQream that provides users with high-performance massive data analytics. “SQream is a data analytics engine, which rapidly integrates into existing Hadoop and legacy data warehouse ecosystems. SQream can process massive amounts of data with more dimensions, significantly faster and at lower cost than traditional solutions. The performance of the storage infrastructure is critical to the overall performance of SQream’s solution. SQream found that StorONE’s S1 Enterprise Storage Platform delivers the performance their software demands, at a price their customer can afford.”
Latest Release of Intel Parallel Studio XE Delivers New Features to Boost HPC and AI Performance
March 12, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Intel Parallel Studio XE is a complete software development suite that includes highly optimized compilers and math and data analytics libraries, along with comprehensive tools for performance analysis, application debugging, and parallel processing. It’s available as a download for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. “With this release, the focus is on making it easier for HPC and AI developers to deliver fast and reliable parallel code for the most demanding applications.”
Adding Ultra Low Latency to PanFS for AI and HPC
March 11, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Curtis Anderson from Panasas gave this talk at SC19. “Panasas PanFS, the operating environment for the Panasas ActiveStor architecture, delivers superior performance for today’s demanding workloads. A scale-out object back-end supports limitless scaling, while optimal data placement and an internally balanced architecture boost efficiency. All with frustration-free deployment, operation, and maintenance.”
NEC X and VACO Partner on AI/ML Solution using Vector Computing
March 10, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Today the NEC X innovation accelerator announced a new reference design and services offering with VACO that enables enterprises to more confidently comply with personally identifiable information (PII) data governance regulations such as GDPR. Based on the NEC X’s SX-Aurora TSUBASA AI platform, the reference design uses vector processing to provide supercomputing performance on a compact PCIe x16 card. This AI platform runs VACO’s proven Cognitive Computing Framework and can be scaled with the exact number of vector engine (VE) cards needed to process large data sets in real time, for use in machine learning (ML) applications such as PII redaction and GDPR compliance for banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), as well as several other segments.
Xilinx Announces Versal Premium ACAP for Network and Cloud Acceleration
March 10, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Today Xilinx announced Versal Premium, the third series in the Versal ACAP portfolio. The Versal Premium series features highly integrated, networked and power-optimized cores and the industry’s highest bandwidth and compute density on an adaptable platform. Versal Premium is designed for the highest bandwidth networks operating in thermally and spatially constrained environments, as well as for cloud providers who need scalable, adaptable application acceleration.
HPC in the Cloud: Innovating Without Infrastructure Constraints
March 10, 2020 by Leave a Comment
In this video from Big Compute 2020, Barry Bolding from AWS shows how high performance computing in the cloud has been enabling innovation — without infrastructure constraints — across multiple industries. “Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs.”
12.8 Tbps Mellanox Spectrum-3 Ethernet Switches Optimized for Cloud, Storage, and AI
March 9, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Today Mellanox announced it has commenced shipments of SN4000 Ethernet switches. The SN4000 family is powered by Mellanox Spectrum-3 – the world’s best performing, most scalable, and most flexible 12.8 Tbps Ethernet switch ASIC, which is optimized for Cloud, Ethernet Storage Fabric, and AI interconnect applications. SN4000 platforms come in flexible form-factors supporting a combination of up to 32 ports of 400GbE, 64 ports of 200GbE and 128 ports of 100/50/25/10GbE. The SN4000 platforms complement the 200/400GbE SN3000 leaf switches to form an efficient and high bandwidth leaf/spine network.
Video: Next Generation AMD CPU and Accelerator Technologies
March 7, 2020 by 2 Comments
Bradley McCredie from AMD gave this talk at the Rice Oil & Gas Conference. “While foundries bravely drive forward to overcome the technical and economic challenges posed by scaling to 5nm and beyond, Moore’s law alone can provide only a fraction of the performance / watt and performance / dollar gains needed to satisfy the demands of today’s high performance computing and artificial intelligence applications. To close the gap, multiple strategies are required. First, new levels of innovation and design efficiency will supplement technology gains to continue to deliver meaningful improvements in SoC performance. Second, heterogenous compute architectures will create x-factor increases of performance efficiency for the most critical applications.”
