InfiniBand and 10GbE Head for Showdown

Dec 21, 2007 | Will 10GbE reach critical mass in the datacenter next year? The beginnings of a viable 10GbE ecosystem are now emerging and a number of analysts think 2008 may be a watershed year for this technology. Meanwhile, InfiniBand has established itself in HPC and is looking to expand into the broader enterprise. The upcoming year will see initial battle lines being drawn in the struggle for interconnect share in the datacenter.
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The insideHPC Top Five Stories for 2007

Dec 21, 2007 | Contributor John West highlights the most popular stories posted at insideHPC.com in 2007, as determined by reader page views and clicks. From AMD to ZFS, John covered the gamut this year in his own inimitable style.
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The New Face of the TOP500

Dec 21, 2007 | In recent years, the TOP500 has shifted from a pure HPC list to one that includes systems in enterprise datacenters. While the application model for each domain is different, most of the technology trends are identical. The need for complex simulations in HPC and virtualization in the enterprise, together with the domination of multicore CPUs and the need for faster storage, mandates the use of a high throughput and low latency I/O.
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DataDirect Gears Up for Next Generation Storage Appliance

Dec 14, 2007 | Last month DataDirect Networks announced its 8th generation high performance storage offering, the S2A9900. The new system will double performance of the current S2A9550 and continue in the tradition of previous S2A technology in providing enterprise-class performance and reliability using inexpensive SATA disk hardware.
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The Week in Review

Dec 14, 2007 | SGI intros BioCluster; Idaho National Laboratory gets a high performance computing center; and Sun opens up the T2 processor design. John West recaps those stories and more in our weekly wrap-up.
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Report from the 18th Machine Evaluation Workshop

Dec 07, 2007 | On November 27-28, Daresbury Laboratories hosted the 18th Machine Evaluation Workshop, a premier UK event dedicated to distributed and high performance scientific computing. HPCwire contributing author, Chris Lazou provides some highlights, including HPC benchmark behavior on systems based on the newest Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors.
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IBRIX Takes Aim at New Vertical Markets

Dec 07, 2007 | IBRIX, one of the smaller players in the HPC storage market, is preparing to enter its next growth phase. With a revamped executive team, lead by CEO Bernard Gilbert, the company is looking to expand its market footprint.
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The Week in Review

Dec 07, 2007 | AMD pushes back Barcelona quad-core production; Red Hat adds distributed computing features; several beginnings mark a premature new year; and insideHPC creates an HPC scholarship resource. John West recaps those stories and more in our weekly wrap-up.
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The Week in Review

Nov 30, 2007 | HPC fellowships announced; HPC Server 2008 needs less memory than Vista; and Rambus aims for 1 TB per second memory bandwidth. John West recaps those stories and more in our weekly wrap-up.
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SGI Stays the Course Amid Stock Woes

Nov 30, 2007 | SGI has a good news/bad news fiscal quarter, where bookings were up substantially, but profitibility remained elusive. Meanwhile, the stock remains depressed. Is there trouble in Altix-ville? At least one major investor thinks so.
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SC07 Holds First Cluster Challenge

Nov 23, 2007 | The Cluster Challenge was held in conjunction with the SC07 conference in Reno, Nevada last week. The event sought to create an exhibition and competition in which teams of undergraduate students would compete in a demonstration of talent, technology and accessibility of entry-level supercomputing.
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The Week in Review

Nov 23, 2007 | Microsoft lays down HPC challenge; AMD gets cash infusion amid rumors of CEO departure; Green500 list released; Red Hat and Platform Computing team up. John West recaps those stories and more in our weekly wrap-up.
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HPC in the Land of 24/7

Nov 23, 2007 | More businesses than ever are employing high performance computing capabilities to fulfill their mission-critical needs. Here we take a look at three companies -- NASDAQ, Wal-Mart and FedEx -- that are using HPC assets to run their businesses.
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MATLAB's Journey to Parallel Computing

Nov 15, 2007 | MATLAB has become the preeminent interactive programming environment for scientists and engineers around the world. Just prior to SC07, we spoke with The MathWorks co-founder and chief scientist Cleve Moler about the evolution of MATLAB and about how the product grew to include parallel programming support.
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Cray Announces Next Generation XT5 Supercomputers

Nov 09, 2007 | Cray has announced their new XT5 product family, the next generation in their flagship XT line of supercomputers. The new family encompasses two machines the XT5 and the XT5h. According to the company, the new machines are capable of scaling to sustained -- not peak -- petaflop performance.
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The Week in Review

Nov 09, 2007 | Cray debuts XT5 hybrid super; HP announces HPC programs; RapidMind gives multicore a boost; Cray customers get a new debugger; and TotalView lets developers "back up" with reverse debugging. John West recaps those stories and more in this packed pre-SC07 edition.
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Fulcrum Targets 'Datacenter Ethernet' with New Switch

Nov 09, 2007 | Fulcrum Microsystems has introduced its latest 10 GbE switch silicon, the FM4000 series IP router chips. The company is positioning the new devices as the foundation of "Datacenter Ethernet," that is, Ethernet for high-performance computing, server and storage host interconnect, and for datacenter aggregation.
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Compilers and More: Gloptimizations

Nov 09, 2007 | With the increased importance of benchmark performance, compiler development teams are encouraged to aggressively optimize performance on these programs. While these optimizations may be impressive, they may offer little, if any, practical value for real applications.
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SDSU Team Works Around the Clock to Gather Fire Data

Nov 02, 2007 | Eric Frost and his colleagues at the San Diego State University's Immersive Visualization Center have been working nearly around the clock to collect images of the San Diego region since the first reports of fire near Santa Ysabel started trickling in the afternoon of October 21.
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Platform Acquires Scali Manage Business

Nov 02, 2007 | On Monday, Platform Computing announced it acquired Scali Manage, the HPC cluster management platform developed by Scali Inc. Platform will take over the entire business surrounding Scali Manage including sales, development, support and QA. All key Scali Manage personnel have joined the company.
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The Week in Review

Nov 02, 2007 | Platform takes a slice out of Scali; NERSC introduces its new director; Argonne and Tokyo Tech order more flops; and DOE lab says Cray super is good to go. These stories and more in our weekly wrap-up.
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High Performance 3D Image Reconstruction Platforms

Oct 26, 2007 | Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) offer a number of compelling advantages for diagnostic medical imaging, but at the same time, demand large amounts of computing processing. The advent of acceleration platforms such as the Cell BE, FPGAs and GPUs are providing an array of cost-effective solutions.
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Little Big Computing At Simpson Strong-Tie

Oct 26, 2007 | Simpson Strong-Tie is a leading designer and manufacturer of construction products and a relatively new user of HPC products. Though new to HPC, Simpson has managed to leverage a small cluster in ways that have allowed the company to reduce time to market and increase its product diversity.
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eScience: It's Really About People

Oct 26, 2007 | Even though the buzz about eScience often focuses on massive hardware, user interfaces, storage capacity and other technical issues, in the end, the ability of eScience to serve the needs of scientific research teams boils down to people: the ability of the builders of the infrastructure to communicate with its users and understand their needs and the realities of their work cultures.
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The Week in Review

Oct 26, 2007 | Cray licenses Aussie debugging software; NEC launches SX-9 super; Microsoft gives in to EU ruling; and Nallatech cozies up to Intel's QuickPath. John West recaps those stories and more in the latest HPC news of the week.
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