For Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the work is just beginning.

August 1, 2012 by

LLNL Takes the Lead in Managing the DOE’s FastForward Program

Around the end of March, 2012, The U.S. Department of Energy informed the folks at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) they had been selected to run the DOE’s FastForward program. Now LLNL is certainly not ‘running’ this on their own – they are for the most part on equal footing with their sister labs (in alphabetical order), Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories.

They all have parallel and comparable research responsibilities, but for LLNL, those are in addition to the very big task of managing the overall FastForward program.

Filed Under: Exascale, HPC Hardware, The Exascale Report

Featured Community Response

August 1, 2012 by

Do you believe a roadmap exists that will get us to Exascale?

A roadmap may incorporate the design and establish the sequence of actions required to manufacture such a design based on expectation of the enabling technologies at the time to completion. The cost, MTBF, and power unspecified, this roadmap need only satisfy the criterion of a workload class that can deliver 1018 operations per second. Such roadmaps have been suggested by colleagues on both sides of the Pacific Rim. Such a system if too narrow in application, too difficult to program, too limited in uninterrupted execution time, consuming too much power to be deployable at but a few sites, and too expensive to acquire and operate may be considered a “stunt machine” whose principal value is a form of shallow and brief status. Within this perspective, I think the answer is “yes”, there is a roadmap (perhaps several) to realize an exascale stunt machine sometime around the end of this decade.

Filed Under: Exascale, Government, HPC Hardware, Industry Segments, The Exascale Report

More Community Response

August 1, 2012 by

Community Response Section

In our recent survey, we asked the question, “Do you believe a roadmap exists that will get us to Exascale?”

63% of the survey respondents said, “NO” – they do not believe there is a roadmap that will get us to exascale

Filed Under: Exascale, HPC Hardware, The Exascale Report

The HPC500

August 1, 2012 by

You’re probably familiar with the TOP500, but are you aware of the HPC500?

This is an important effort that will hopefully go a long way to building an even stronger community of leading HPC practitioners.

According to the website www.hpc500.com the HPC500 is comprised of the foremost people who bring high performance computing technology to bear on challenging problems in science, engineering, and business.

Filed Under: Exascale, HPC Hardware, The Exascale Report

UHPC is out. FastForward is in.

August 1, 2012 by

A Feature Interview with NVIDIA’s Bill Dally

The Exascale Report: On the heels of the recent FastForward program announcements, let’s take just a few steps back to frame our discussion. The FastForward program has been launched just as DARPA’s UHPC program has come to a close. Would you consider the UHPC program as being successful?

Bill Dally: I think for NVIDIA it’s been very successful. With our Echelon project, we’ve really moved the needle and made a number of very fundamental advances in technologies that are important for future HPC machines, ranging from new, low power circuit designs, to novel, very efficient energy architectures, to advances in programming languages, auto tuning, and various software development technologies. So, for us, I think there are a bunch of very tangible results that we’ve achieved under the UHPC program that are going to make a big difference in HPC in the future. One piece of evidence for that is that we’ve had 17 peer-reviewed scientific publications come out of NVIDIA’s part of the UHPC program.

Filed Under: CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, Exascale, Future Technology, Government, HPC Hardware, Industry Segments, The Exascale Report Tagged With:

An Interview with Intel’s Raj Hazra

August 1, 2012 by

The Intel Perspective on the Company’s Acquisition of Cray’s Interconnect Technology

An Interview with Intel Vice President and General Manager of Technical Computing, Raj Hazra

A number of industry leaders and analysts have given their opinions on the merits and questions regarding Intel’s acquisition of Cray’s interconnect hardware assets. And while the attention has been placed on “hardware assets” in these discussions, little emphasis has been given to the human resource assets – the talent and expertise picked up by Intel as part of this deal.

Filed Under: Exascale, HPC Hardware, Podcast, Resources, The Exascale Report

Research HPC: An Interview with Intel’s Mic Bowman

August 1, 2012 by

As all eyes turn to the horizon in search of exascale, one has to wonder how the computational infrastructure will change by the end of this decade. One very exciting possibility is presented by the rich simulation and interface technologies being explored as part of what Intel calls the 3D web.

From corporate and social gaming to immersive educational programs, virtual worlds and next generation interfaces will soon have an impact on many different aspects of society. To get a better understanding of what this is all about, we interviewed Mic Bowman, a principal engineer in Intel Labs and head of Intel’s Virtual World Infrastructure research project.

The Exascale Report: Mic, thanks for joining us today. A few years ago, at SC09 in Portland, Oregon, Justin Rattner (Intel CTO) gave the keynote address on the topic of 3D Internet, and I know you worked closely with him on that speech. What were some of the key points that you recall Justin making in that keynote?

Filed Under: Exascale, Future Technology, HPC Hardware, The Exascale Report

Will FastForward Be Fast Enough?

August 1, 2012 by

Unless you’ve been camped out in a doomsday fallout shelter, you must already be aware of the Department of Energy’s FastForward program awards, most of which were announced over the past few weeks by the vendors receiving those funding awards. Most, but not all. At least not that we’ve seen.

The total amount handed out to date as part of the DOE’s FastForward program is $62.5 million. That would be mildly impressive if it was all going to one vendor – or to one specific topic of research. But that amount has been disbursed among five (5) different vendors, covering three research areas, and stretched out over two years.

Yes, we said five vendors. Not just the four vendors as being reported in the other outlets. Whittling down the list from a total of 26 responses to DOE’s RFP, of which 10 focused on processors, 7 on memory and 9 on storage, the funding awards went to (in alphabetical order), AMD, IBM, Intel Federal, NVIDIA, and Whamcloud.

Filed Under: Exascale, Government, HPC Hardware, Industry Segments, The Exascale Report Tagged With:

Contrary to Misleading Rumors – Cray Continues Its Focus as a Systems Company

July 6, 2012 by

Intel and Cray should be applauded for smart, strategic business decision

A number of publications have voiced their opinions that Cray is shifting its focus and strategic direction to software. Some public comments have even gone as far as stating that Cray is becoming a software company.

The Exascale Report interviewed Cray CEO, Pete Ungaro, to set the record straight.

Filed Under: Compute, Exascale, HPC Hardware, The Exascale Report

The 451 Group’s Take on the Intel-Cray Deal

June 7, 2012 by

Cray Completes Sale of Interconnect Hardware Assets to Intel

On May 2, 2012, global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) announced it had completed the previously announced transaction to sell its interconnect hardware development program and related intellectual property to Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) for $140 million in cash. The agreement was originally announced on April 24, 2012.

The 451 Group has granted permission to The Exascale Report to reprint and distribute its take on this deal as prepared by analysts John Abbott and John Barr on April 25, 2012.

Filed Under: Exascale, HPC Hardware, Network, The Exascale Report
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