Here is a collection of highlights, selected totally subjectively, from this week’s HPC news stream as reported at insideHPC.com and HPCwire.
10 words and a link
Rackable announces Q4, posts loss for Q and year
Bull reports 2008 results, posts profit
ClearSpeed CEO resigns, company on hard times
US stimulus final makes investments in science, computing
Penguin releases Scyld Clusterware 5.2
Appro addresses entry HPC market with GreenBlade
SDSC awarded NSF cloud computing grant on Google’s CluE
SiCortex hardware supports Virtual Prairie
Red Hat and Windows to support the other’s hypervisors
Universities challenged to power down for the planet
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative is organizing a challenge to encourage universities to “make a dent in pollution by powering down campus computers.”
One winning university will be selected internationally based on the highest percentage of on-campus staff, student and faculty pledges toward use of computer power management tools. Six founding universities of the campaign include: Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, University of California at San Diego, University of Iowa and University of Michigan. The deadline to enter the competition is March 13, 2009.
“The Power Down for the Planet program is designed to educate and engage college students on a large scale about their computer power consumption and how that affects the environment,” said Pat Tiernan, executive director of Climate Savers Computing Initiative, an international nonprofit organization committed to reducing IT-related waste by half by 2010. “College students in the U.S. alone can collectively make a one million-ton reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by better managing their computers.”
You can find out more about the challenge here, including lots of resources (posters, handouts, etc.) that you can plaster your school with.
What is the Climate Savers Computing Initiative you ask?
Started by Google and Intel in 2007, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative is a nonprofit group of eco-conscious consumers, businesses and conservation organizations. The Initiative was started in the spirit of the World Wildlife Fund’s Climate Savers program that was created to cut carbon dioxide emissions and demonstrate that reducing emissions by saving energy is good business. Our goal is to promote the development, deployment and adoption of smart technologies that can both improve the overall energy efficiency of a computer as well as reduce the energy consumed when the computer not in use through effective power management.
Their goal: to reduce power consumption in computers 50 percent by 2010.
Butte is Open for Business
Officials at the Rocky Mountain Supercomputing Center have announced that their new IBM supercomputer is ready for business. The new Butte, Montana, supercomputing center was built to spur economic development in the region and assist researchers from across the state.
“We deliver these resources, these supercomputing resources in a new on-demand fashion. Pay by the click, pay by the bit, pay by the byte and you put this all together and it gives you a unique value proposition to go out for the state to help attract new business. For businesses that are already here, it flattens the playing field for entrepreneurs and small to medium sized businesses,” [Earl] Dodd [RMSC’s IBM contractor] said.
RMSC expects to hold an open house event sometime in early April. Until then, Montana’s CBS news station has a short video clip on the machine floor. For more info or to watch the clip, check out the source article here.
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John West is part of the team that summarizes the headlines in HPC news every day at insideHPC.com. You can contact him at [email protected].