The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing
Blog: HPC Matters
HPC Matters is a joint blog consisting of contributors from the Tabor Communications team on their observations and insights into HPC matters.
October 23, 2008
Has the Joe Boat Sailed? Wanted: HPC Mascot
The concept of the "democratization of HPC" is not a new one, but in recent months it appears to have taken on a life of its own. Our own editors and Tabor Research analysts have alluded to it many times, including twice within the last week (see Michael Feldman's blog and his recent interview with Bob Graybill). It's a concept that has been leveraged by or associated with nearly a dozen vendors in the last few months, including Sun, Cray, Microsoft, Bull, AMD, Platform, Penguin, Red Hat and IBM. It's becoming de rigueur as a concept among researchers, academicians and industry, if you can judge from some of the excellent programs out there, including the Blue Collar Computing Initiative from OSC and the impressive Cluster Challenge for undergraduates hosted by SC.
While we can argue about whether or not this democratization has actually arrived or is on its way, it appears that a significant number of users and vendors in the HPC community want very much for the industry to head in this direction. And the technology is there, or nearly there.
In my opinion (this is, after all, a blog), it would be helpful if we had a champion (aka, mascot) to lead the charge.
Why? Because despite our best intentions and the state of the technology, as an industry we have failed thus far to connect the dots. We have not adequately presented a case to the small-medium business community, let alone consumers, about how HPC can be accessible and how it impacts our lives on a daily basis.
Think about it. The average person is touched by HPC dozens of times every day. When we go to the gas pumps. When we take a prescription drug. When we call up the local weather report online. When we drive our more energy-efficient vehicles. When we make an online stock trade. (Hope you're not doing too much of that these days.)
Truly communicating this democratization so that it is internalized by the broader community might help fund numerous initiatives and ultimately give us a competitive advantage in the global market, while also helping so many of you to recruit new talent.
Regardless of your politics, it should be fairly apparent that a certain political party has done a pretty good job of mobilizing national policy around the "Joe the Plumber" and "Hockey Mom" mascots. We in HPC need a new and different symbol of our own.
Or maybe we could just wait a couple of weeks and get one of theirs cheaper.
Posted by Diane Lieberman - October 23 @ 6:30PM
(Digg, Technorati, more)
Sponsored Links
Diane Lieberman
Recent Comments
still innovative by PhoenixW
Rediculous notion! by jimmymac
The benchmark is completely wrong. by Patrick LEE
SiCortex / Betamax by KevinButerbaugh
Good Luck to Silicon Graphics by Rick_Mandahl
It's About Realism not Speed by cyberdyne
SGI, Not Alone by EricS
Re: Obama Pushes Science Agenda by lwalker701
The battleground... by rgreen1
How it went wrong for SGi by atzanov
Harder than chess by addisonsnell
Debt consolidation by EliasV
Re: Recession Takes a Bite Out of Supercomputing by CooperO
How it went wrong for SGi by shawnu
How it all went wrong for SGI by jmh900
Torn between IRIX and Linux by Merblich
Sun Microsystems by IsaacU
New Search Engine Duck Duck Go by yegg
GlobalFoundries and IBM ? by gutiea
GlobalFoundries and IBM ? by gutiea
HPC Market by Flamingo
Fusion Cloud Rendering by gary@amd
Fusion Cloud Rendering by gary@amd
Not cores, but memory! by dmpase
Are you on Intel's payroll? by jimmymac
anchos by addisonsnell
anchos? by in_the_crease
Here's to Cray accuracy over HPCwire's. by taylors
Tech community prefers Pepsi to Coke by cogsci
Feature Articles
TeraGrid '09: Student Participation Soars
There was a new energy at this year's TeraGrid '09 conference thanks to an outstanding turnout for the student program. Thanks to support from the National Science Foundation, more than 100 high school, undergraduate and graduate students were able to participate in the conference.
Read More...
TeraGrid '09: OSG and TeraGrid Collaboration
Paul Avery, a recognized leader in advanced grid and networking for science, delivered the first keynote address at the recent TeraGrid '09 conference in Arlington, Virginia. A professor of physics at the University of Florida, Avery is co-principal investigator and founding member of the Open Science Grid (OSG). Avery talked about the history of OSG, some of the projects that leverage its resources, and OSG's relationship with TeraGrid.
Read More...
TeraGrid '09: Thriving in an Exponentially Changing World
Before he even took the podium, Ed Seidel was one of the buzz makers at the TeraGrid '09 conference. The day before his keynote, it was announced that he was stepping in as acting assistant director of the National Science Foundation's math and physical sciences directorate. For his talk at the conference, however, Seidel focused on the issues and efforts within his home at NSF, the Office of Cyberinfrastructure.
Read More...
Top Headlines
3D Seismic Data: Taking a Smarter Approach to Interpretation
Jul 09 | Engineer Live | The demand for computational tools to underpin the 3D seismic interpretation process has never been more apparent. Read more...
Engineering Unemployment Soared in 2Q to 8.6%
Jul 08 | EE Times | Unemployment for U.S. engineers has reached record levels, according to government figures. Read more...
Gartner Adjusts 2009 IT Spend Downward Again
Jul 08 | Network World | Global spending for 2009 projected to drop 6 percent, for a total of $3.2 trillion. Read more...
Concurrent and Parallel Are Not The Same
Jul 08 | Linux Magazine | Portability or efficiency? Neither is guaranteed when writing explicit parallel code. Read more...
800 TFLOP Real-Time Ray Tracing GPU Unveiled, Not for Gamers
Jul 07 | Ars Technica | Japanese company builds custom ASIC to accelerate real-time ray traced rendering for the auto industry. Read more...
Featured Whitepapers
Building High Performance Computing in a Green and Modular Solution Building Block
Apr 14 | | Many HPC IT departments are feeling the rising pressure to deliver more capacity computing and performance while trying to reduce the total cost of ownership. This white paper discusses how an environmentally-friendly and open-standards HPC building block based computing system using flexible interconnect options helps address capacity computing needs.
Multimedia
Webcast: Dell Expands HPC Access and Adoption with Intel Cluster Ready Program
Source: Addison Snell, GM/VP, Tabor Research; sponsored by Dell
Many organizations that could benefit from the use of HPC clusters find that it is complicated to get the systems up and running because of limited IT resources or the complexities of the clusters themselves. Learn how the Intel Cluster Ready program, for which Dell was an original partner, seeks to address this challenge for entry level and mid-range HPC users.
Video White Paper: Architecting a Better Network Storage Solution
BlueArc's Titan architecture represents an evolutionary step in file servers by creating a hardware-based file system that can scale bandwidth, IOPS, and overall data capacity well beyond conventional software-based devices. With its ability to virtualize a massive storage pool of up to four usable petabytes of tiered storage, Titan can scale with growing data requirements, offering a competitive advantage for businesses, researchers, or other enterprises seeking to better manage data growth while still ensuring optimal performance.
Webcast: HPC Development Solutions: Sun Studio & Sun HPC ClusterTools
Sun Studio Compilers and Tools and Sun HPC ClusterTools allow you to create high performance parallel applications for OpenSolaris, Solaris and Linux. Sun Studio Express 11/08 includes MPI performance analysis capabilities and full OpenMP 3.0 compiler support. Learn about all this and the latest in Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.1.
Blogs by Topics
Blogs by Author
- John Towns
- John Shandor
- Dennis Barker
- Michael Feldman
- Debra Goldfarb
- Diane Lieberman
- Isaac Lopez
- Addison Snell
- Deb Walsh
- Chris Willard
HPC Blogroll
- Computing Research Policy Blog
- InsideHPC
- Interconnects
- Reed's Ruminations
- Scalability.org
- StorageMojo
- Sun HPC Watercooler
Featured Events
-
July 13-16, 2009
WORLDCOMP'09
Las Vegas , NV
USA
-
August 24-28, 2009
Data Mining: Levels I, II, & III
Denver , CO
USA