In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team recaps the SC19 Student Cluster Competition. “We talk about the student configurations, kicked around the pros and cons of the “small is beautiful” movement in the student cluster competition world. “Does the trend towards fewer-bigger nodes mean a re-emergence and eventual re-victory of SMP over MPP?” wonders Shahin! No records in HPL or HPCG, but some good scores regardless.”
Podcast: Digital Trust in the Age of Deepfakes
November 25, 2019 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team catches up with Dave Maher, CTO of internet security company Intertrust, to share with us his deep knowledge of digital communication, identity management, data rights management, cryptography and digital certificates, blockchain, and much more.
Radio Free HPC Breaks Down the TOP500
November 19, 2019 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC teams looks at the newly released TOP500 list. “We talk about the changes in this version of the list (100 new systems, but none in the top 24), how the major countries stack up against each other, and vendor system share. We also discuss why this list is so, well, kind of not as exciting as we’ve got used to, and what we expect to see on future lists. There are some big things coming, but, like your birthday, they’re not here yet.”
Podcast: SC19 Student Cluster Competition Preview
November 17, 2019 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team catches up with Jessi Lanum, a veteran of the SC19 Student Cluster Competition, for an insider peek on what it’s like to compete for cluster competition glory. “For the few of you who are not already fans of these events, here’s the lowdown: 16 student teams representing universities from around the world have been working their brains out designing, building, and tuning clusters provided by their sponsors. They can use as much hardware as they want, the only limitation is that their systems can’t use more than 3,000 watts during the competition.”
Podcast: Full Rundown of SC19 Events in Denver
November 7, 2019 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team reviews the full list of events leading up to SC19 in Denver. “There’s a lot that happens before the exhibit floor opens on Monday night. Our old pal Rich Brueckner from insideHPC joins us to give us the full rundown. We even have a few parties to tell you about.”
Radio Free HPC Celebrates 251st Episode
November 3, 2019 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team celebrates their 251st episode. “Not enamored with round numbers, the team notes that 251 is a prime number and round enough for celebration. This is not quite a “highlights” show, but a look back at how RadioFreeHPC came about, who came up with the name RadioFreeHPC, how the show has evolved, a bit of “remember when”, a few notable episodes, and the meteoric rise of its listenership!”
Podcast: RISC-V CEO Sees Bright Global Future for Open Source CPUs
October 29, 2019 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team catches up with Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V. “RISC-V can be used for light weight tasks such as embedded processing but, on the other hand, is also going to be utilized as the system accelerator for the European Exascale initiative boxes. That’s some serious flexibility.”
Podcast: When a Different OS Gets Different Results
October 28, 2019 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at problems in the scientific software world. “There’s a bug in Python scripts that caused different results in identical routines run on different operating systems. As the guys discuss, it’s not a Python thing but a problem with the order in which files got read according to the operating system’s protocols. This impacts the sort order and thus the end results. The gang speculates on other causes of these types of problems and the fixes that should be employed.”
Podcast: The Turing Machine is Sequential, so how about a Parallel Machine?
October 15, 2019 by
The @RadioFreeHPC team is joined by the folks at MemComputing, a San Diego startup that’s built a new parallel foundation for computing. It calls it the universal memcomputing machine, and a realization of self-organizing circuits. “We analytically prove that the memory properties of UMMs endow them with universal computing power—they are Turing-complete.”
Podcast: Quantum Supremacy? Yes and No!
October 7, 2019 by
In this podcast, the RadioFreeHPC team discusses the Google/NASA paper, titled “Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor”, that was published and then unpublished. “The tantalizing promise of quantum computers is that certain computational tasks might be executed exponentially faster on a quantum processor than on a classical processor. A fundamental challenge is to build a high-fidelity processor capable of running quantum algorithms in an exponentially large computational space.”
