Radio Free HPC runs down the latest TOP500 Fastest Supercomputers

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team reviews the latest TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. “The TOP500 celebrates its 25th anniversary with a major shakeup at the top of the list. For the first time since November 2012, the US claims the most powerful supercomputer in the world, leading a significant turnover in which four of the five top systems were either new or substantially upgraded.”

Video: Liqid Teams with Inspur at GTC for Composable Infrastructure

In this video from GTC 2018, Dolly Wu from Inspur and Marius Tudor from Liquid describe how the two companies are collaborating on Composable Infrastructure for AI and Deep Learning workloads. “AI and deep learning applications will determine the direction of next-generation infrastructure design, and we believe dynamically composing GPUs will be central to these emerging platforms,” said Dolly Wu, GM and VP Inspur Systems.

Liqid and Inspur team up for Composable GPU-Centric Rack-Scale Solutions

Today Liqid and Inspur announced that the two companies will offer a joint solution designed specifically for advanced, GPU-intensive applications and workflows. “Our goal is to work with the industry’s most innovative companies to build an adaptive data center infrastructure for the advancement of AI, scientific discovery, and next-generation GPU-centric workloads,” said Sumit Puri, CEO of Liqid. “Liqid is honored to be partnering with data center leaders Inspur Systems and NVIDIA to deliver the most advanced composable GPU platform on the market with Liqid’s fabric technology.”

DDN and Inspur Sign Agreement for Joint Sales & Marketing

Today DataDirect Networks announced a joint sales and marketing agreement with Inspur, a leading China-based, cloud-computing and total-solution-and-services provider, in which the companies will leverage their core strengths and powerful computing technologies to offer industry-leading high-performance computing solutions to HPC customers worldwide. “DDN is delighted to expand our work with Inspur globally and to build upon the joint success we have achieved in China,” said Larry Jones, DDN’s partner manager for the Inspur relationship. “DDN’s leadership in massively scalable, high-performance storage solutions, combined with Inspur’s global data center and cloud computing solutions, offer customers extremely efficient, world-class infrastructure options.”

ASC17 Student Competitors to Gain Access to #1 Sunway TaihuLight Supercomputer

Today the Asia Supercomputer Community announced that the world’s fastest supercomputer, Sunway TaihuLight, will be used by students in the upcoming 2017 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge. “The teams will design and build a cluster under 3000W to conduct a benchmark test, a mystery app, and other applications involving the latest technologies. Prizes and awards will be based on single applications and overall performances.”

Riken’s Shoubu Supercomputer Leads Green500 List

Today the Green500 released their listing of the world’s most energy efficient supercomputers. “Japan’s research institution RIKEN once again captured the top spot with its Shoubu supercomputer. With rating of 6673.84 MFLOPS/Watt, Shoubu edged out another RIKEN system, Satsuki, the number 2 system that delivered 6195.22 MFLOPS/Watt. Both are “ZettaScaler”supercomputers, employing Intel Xeon processors and PEZY-SCnp manycore accelerators.

Video: Implementing Rack Scale Architectures with Open Hardware Designs

In this video from the Open Server Summit, Dolly Wu from Inspur presents: Implementing Rack Scale Architectures with Open Hardware Designs. “There are several major rackscale open hardware platforms currently available, including OCP (Facebook Implementation), OCS (Microsoft Implementation), Scorpio Project Designs (Open Datacenter Designs for China), Intel RSA (Rack Scale Architecture). Datacenter and Cloud designers need to be aware of the differences among them and choose the one which is most suitable for their use case to deploy various types of private cloud, public cloud and hybrid cloud. We will invite Baidu as case study to speak about their datacenter deployments based on Scorpio Project Designs.”

175 Teams to Compete in ASC16 Student Supercomputer Challenge

The ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC16) Training kicked off in Beijing on January 26. First initiated and organized in China, ASC16 has gained support from experts and technology organizations in US, Europe, and Asia. With a goal to inspire more innovative applications in various fields, it has attracted more and more talent to supercomputing and has greatly promoted communications in the supercomputing community throughout the world. Within 5 years, the ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge has become the world’s largest supercomputing hackathon.

China’s HPC Vendors Look to US and European Markets

Who are the world’s most important vendors of supercomputers, at least as measured by the number of systems they have in the Top500? HP is the leader with a 31 per cent share; Cray is number two with just under 14 per cent. So far, so unsurprising. But what has been little remarked upon is that in third place – with 49 systems, or 9.8 per cent of the Top500 list – is the Chinese vendor, Sugon. And both Sugon and Inspur, the other main Chinese vendor, have their sights set on expanding still further, with trade missions to Europe and setting up partnerships and subsidiaries in both Europe and the USA.

Call for Participation: ASC16 Student Supercomputer Challenge

The 2016 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC16) in China has issued its Call for Participation. As one of the largest Student Cluster Competitions in the world, the ASC16 initiative provides a unique opportunity for organizations and individuals to test their mettle in High Performance Computing. Student Teams and Potential Hosting Institutions are invited to apply.