Michael Feldman IT Revolution Just an Einstein Away
Post Date: December 14, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: From the Editor

Is there any chance the information technology juggernaut can be managed by a few million brave souls? Hope is on the way.

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Michael Feldman A Look Back at 2006
Post Date: December 14, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: From the Editor

Wow, 2006 is almost in the books. Editor Michael Feldman recaps the some of the top HPC events and trends of the past year.

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Michael Feldman The IT Workforce Conundrum
Post Date: December 07, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: From the Editor

In the Information Society that we seem to be inhabiting, it has become a cliché to talk about the insatiable demand for information technology workers. The IT workforce shortage is an annoying reality, but it makes sense. In agricultural societies of the past, a significant percentage of the populace ended up as farmers to serve that economic model. Things are no different in this era; only the economic engine has changed.

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Michael Feldman Commodity Processor Chaos or Convergence?
Post Date: November 30, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: From the Editor

The adoption of commodity GPUs and Cell processors into high performance computing is disrupting the comfortable framework of homogeneous x86 computing the industry has enjoyed for the past decade. Where is this technology taking us? Editor Michael Feldman talks about the evolution of GPU computing as seen from the perspective of two industry insiders and reviews some recent work in Europe using the Cell processor for molecular dynamics.

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Michael Feldman High Productivity Computing for the Rest of Us
Post Date: November 23, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: From the Editor

If you think the DARPA HPCS program is just of interest for capability-class supercomputing users -- think again. HPCS, in its most ambitious interpretation, is an attempt to drive a stake through the heart of cluster computing. And the government just anted up almost half a billion dollars to do just that. Editor Michael Feldman talks about some of the ramifications of HPCS as we enter the final phase of DARPA's high productivity computing initiative.

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Michael Feldman The SC-ingularity is Near
Post Date: November 09, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: From the Editor

The largest supercomputing conference of the year -- SC06 -- is about to begin.Editor Michael Feldman offers his perspective on the event's controversial keynote speaker, Ray Kurzweil. He also discusses an emerging technology that promises to both simplify multi-threaded programming and improve its performance. And while no one at SC06 may be talking about this technology, it could have profound effects on the future of high performance computing.

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Michael Feldman How to Talk to a Techno-Liberal (and you must)
Post Date: November 02, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: From the Editor

In the spirit of the upcoming elections, Editor Michael Feldman ponders the liberal and conservative tendencies of scientists and engineers, and how it affects technological progress -- and how it's manifested in the world of high performance computing.

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Michael Feldman HPC Gets Virtual; AMD Gets Graphic
Post Date: October 26, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: From the Editor

Virtualization is entering the HPC world. Editor Michael Feldman talks about three vendors who are trying to rewrite the HPC cluster model with hardware that can be dynamically reconfigured to match changing workloads. He also offers some of his thoughts on AMD's plans for processors that combine x86 CPUs with ATI GPUs.

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Michael Feldman The Games People Play
Post Date: October 19, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: From the Editor

The use of graphics processing units (GPU) for general-purpose computing is poised to change the nature of IT, especially in the HPC community. AMD's merger with ATI Technologies might be the catalyst that drives this new trend.Editor Michael Feldman offers this thoughts on the mainstreaming of GPUs and how this might effect the AMD-Intel rivalry.

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Michael Feldman PlayStations and Petaphilia
Post Date: October 12, 2006 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: From the Editor

Editor Michael Feldman talks about Terra Soft's announcement of the first Cell-processor-based supercomputer cluster and suggests a use for discarded PlayStations. He also offers some comments about a Wired Magazine article that chronicles the rise of petascale data centers and how the IT industry is adapting to this new centralized computing model. Finally, Feldman contemplates the state of the DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program and wonders when we'll get to Phase III.

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