Sun’s Bjorn Andersson Gives Insight into Big Wins

By By Derrick Harris, Editor

November 21, 2005

GRIDtoday editor Derrick Harris spoke with Bjorn Andersson, Sun Microsystems' director of HPC and Grid computing, about what's going on with the company in terms of its Grid and HPC initiatives. Andersson discusses Sun's big customer wins for its Sun Grid and the state of the Grid market, and also hits upon some the company's HPC on-goings, such as its largest HPC win to-date with the Tokyo Institute of Technology.



GRIDtoday:
How are things going with Sun's Grid program?
 
BJORN ANDERSSON: We have seen significant momentum in our program. Most recently, we announced the biggest purchase yet of compute cycles from the Sun Grid. VCC bought 1 million CPU hours for use in the oil and gas industry. We're very excited to go live with such a big deal as one of the first publicly announced customers.

Gt: Can we expect to see more Sun Grid customers announced in the weeks and months to come?

ANDERSSON: We expect this to be just the beginning of several wins with the Sun Grid. This win may have been one of the larger wins to date however; going forward you will see a mix of larger and smaller customers using the Sun Grid.

Gt: Are companies ready to fully embrace utility computing? If not, when do you think it will reach its peak of ubiquity?

ANDERSSON: I would say it's a matter of how comfortable a company is with the Grid technology and how mature they are in establishing the way of working that Grid. Going forward the obstacles will not be so much on the technology side, but it will be more a matter of corporate culture and how you set up service level agreements between participants in an internal Grid infrastructure versus setting up policies for when you utilize a public Grid. We as an industry will get through this, but it's a learning curve. Many companies have embraced Grid technology in their internal infrastructure today. The volume ramp in terms of usage is well on its way. We're now also starting to see companies use the public Grid infrastructure of the Sun Grid. We expect the volume ramp to follow. I believe we're not anywhere close to a peak in usage of Grid technologies internally at companies and organizations. Utility computing can be seen as building on that foundation, so it's even harder to try to predict a peak for utility computing.

Gt: What about “traditional” Grid computing? Given the current state of the market, when do you think Grid will become as ubiquitous as the community would like?

ANDERSSON: When you say “traditional” Grid computing, I think of where Grid computing started in terms of what problems it was used for — traditional scientific and technical computing. We're at Supercomputing 2005 this week, so allow me to look at this from a high-performance computing standpoint. In this area, we have seen a very pronounced trend over the last several years of more and more computing being done on clusters rather than on big monolithic machines. We're also seeing a blurring of the lines between the traditional definitions of Grid and clusters. The whole movement toward cluster computing is also enabling Grids to be more commonplace and used where applicable, while establishing some of the processes and tools needed along the way. What really determines what customers use is the nature of the problem they're trying to solve and what requirements are on latency, bandwidth, memory size, etc. I believe we'll continue to see a diverse environment in HPC that will integrate both clusters and Grids as it applies to the computing requirements.

Gt: What is Sun's take on the current discussions around the need to adopt quality standards before enterprise adoption will really take off?

ANDERSSON: Sun has always worked for standardization of interfaces and continues to do so also in the Grid space. To really reach a level of ubiquity that we want, we need a solid foundation of standards. Then it's up to all vendors to compete on the implementation of these standards.

Gt: Can we expect any big announcements at SC'05?

ANDERSSON: HPC is one of the key focus areas for Sun and we're really investing to accelerate our growth in this market. Just last week we opened our Solution Center for HPC in Hillsboro, Ore. It's a 10 Teraflop capable benchmark and testing facility designed to help customers find their HPC solutions and for us to help remove risk and uncertainties in HPC deployments.

This week, we're also announcing Sun's largest HPC win to-date — that the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) has purchased Sun Fire x64 servers to build Japan's largest supercomputer. Tokyo Tech's project will use Sun Fire x64 servers with 10,480 AMD Opteron processor cores, Sun storage technologies and NEC's integration expertise to build the Tokyo Tech supercomputer. The system will help provide researchers with compute power for a wide range of scientific applications, such as analysis of the complex molecular structure of proteins, simulated blood flow diagnosis in human brains, and clarification of the generation mechanism of Earth and planetary magnetic field. We have a big presence at the show and I would recommend anyone to come by our booth (#1416) to take a look at what we're doing in HPC.

Gt: How do shows like SC help to further the cause of Grid computing? Does it help that new Grid technologies and projects are being presented to individuals spanning the entire HPC spectrum?

ANDERSSON: Shows like Supercomputing are great as focal points to bring key individuals together for sharing ideas and provides a unique showcase of what's available in products and technologies. It really helps the whole community to be exposed to this on a regular basis.

Gt: Finally, how do you feel about the SC shows? Is there anything you're especially looking forward to at this year's event?

ANDERSSON: The Supercomputing shows are always full of exciting products, technology demonstrations and events. It's hard to get the time to see it all. Just to give you a couple of examples, in the Sun booth we'll have a demo of OpenIB connected to the InfiniBand fabric at the show. Related to InfiniBand we're also participating in Storcloud with data management products from former StorageTek, which Sun acquired in August of this year. We also will have a remote visualization technology demo in the booth. The list goes on and on, but you can see some trends. InfiniBand seems to have cleared the hurdle to be a key low latency interconnect. Open source and free software continues to be important, we expect to see a lot of interest in OpenSolaris and the fact that the Sun Studio developer tools now are available with a no cost user license. Also, if you're interested in what's around the corner, take the opportunity to learn about the DARPA/HPCS project. Sun, as a key participant in that project, is showcasing some technologies, including a new programming language called Fortress.

Gt: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

ANDERSSON: From Sun we believe that we can make HPC much more attainable and practical. As we do that, it is becoming a tool for many more usages and starts to become a mission critical element for commercial enterprises — whether it's how you do crash simulation on cars, how you do analysis to figure out how to extract more oil out of the ground or finding that next drug that will cure a disease. Once it's being used for the core part of the value a company delivers, it's by definition mission critical for that company. Sun is applying engineering disciplines from high-end data center designs and our ability to package solutions together as a way to make it much easier and reliable to build out an HPC infrastructure.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire