Oakridge Top Right
HPCwire

Since 1986 - Covering the Fastest Computers
in the World and the People Who Run Them

Language Flags

Visit additional Tabor Communication Publications

Datanami
Digital Manufacturing Report
HPC in the Cloud
Green Computing Report

Tabor Communications
Corporate Video

HPC@Intel: Moving HPC Forward


How do we move high-performance computing forward? At Intel, we are producing technologies that enable major breakthroughs in science, engineering, medicine, and an array of other fields. At the same time, we are helping to make it simpler and more affordable for organizations to get involved with high-performance computing, from small and medium-sized businesses that need cost-effective systems to large-scale data centers that use HPC to solve new problems. But where do we go from here?

In this new series of articles, HPC@Intel: Moving HPC Forward, we will share new and innovative ideas for solving today's -- and tomorrow's -- key challenges in HPC. In the first few months, we will explore strategies for scaling performance forward, evaluate when to say no to parallelism, and explain why balanced systems can deliver performance that rivals systems with alternative architectures. Over the course of the series, we will show you how Intel is advancing the state of HPC while also bringing HPC to a wider range of users.

Advancing HPC at Intel

Intel® architectures are the choice for more than 75 percent of the world's Top500 HPC systems. But our contribution to HPC extends well beyond the production of high-performance processing architectures.

Creating balanced systems is a top priority at Intel. We know that sustainable HPC performance can be achieved only by balancing processor capacity with memory capacity and I/O bandwidth. We are helping to develop those balanced systems and to produce components that deliver significant performance gains for HPC applications.

We are also conducting upstream research on software and hardware technologies to accelerate multi-core and many-core architectures. We are bringing memory capacity closer to the cores, exploring new interconnect strategies, and examining new network fabrics and network packaging technologies. This research has already enabled us to introduce several new technologies into the HPC industry.

We are working to optimize power usage for HPC, not only at the processor and board level but also at the rack and data center level. More than 85 percent of our internal servers are HPC systems. Running those systems has taught us how to optimize power and cooling for large data centers. Now we can achieve very high power density without liquid cooling by employing careful warm and cold air management and other optimizations. We have shared and will continue to share that information with partners and end users.

Meanwhile, we provide a rich portfolio of software tools for HPC. The Intel® Cluster Toolkit includes compilers, performance analysis tools, threading tools, and libraries, such as the Intel® Math Kernel Library and Intel® MPI Library. These tools help developers scale performance forward through focused, surgical changes to code. We also offer deep software expertise. With software engineers specializing in key HPC segments, such as manufacturing, oil and gas, and financial services, we work together with industry players to optimize HPC applications.

We are also heavily involved in education. Intel has partnered with 800 universities around the world to develop curricula that will help tomorrow's software engineers develop parallel software code for HPC. A future article will detail what we are doing to make sure future developers have the skills to write code for thousands of threads running on large multi-node systems.

Working with the HPC ecosystem

We realize the importance of partnering with hardware and software vendors throughout the ecosystem to provide end users with the tools they need to succeed. We work with software developers to help optimize their applications, middleware, and drivers for current and future Intel architectures. For example, we recently released the Intel® Software Development Emulator (Intel® SDE) to support Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX), which will be introduced with the forthcoming "Sandy Bridge" processor. Intel compiler and Intel performance library support for Intel AVX will be available in early Q1 2009.

Charting the road ahead

The Intel "tick-tock" model for processor technology innovation provides the predictability that partners and end users need to maximize the return on their HPC investments. On the most recent "tick," we introduced the 45-nm process technology, which helped deliver better performance and energy efficiency in a smaller version of an existing microarchitecture. In 2009, we will start production on the next-generation 32-nm silicon process technology.

This year's "tock" will capitalize on the 45-nm technology to introduce the "Nehalem" microarchitecture, which will deliver important benefits for HPC customers. Going forward, our partners and end users can continue to count on this beat rate for innovation as they plan their HPC investments.

The tempo of these articles will be even quicker. In coming months, we will evaluate how forward scaling can address the challenges of developing software for new core counts and the inevitable enhancement of the instruction set. We will also examine the transition to parallel architectures: When should software developers say "no" to parallelism? Plus, we will consider offload options: As you optimize your code, will investments in offload options deliver the long-term ROI you need?

We will also discuss the growing use of HPC by small and medium-sized organizations, and show how Intel and our ecosystem partners are working together to make it easier for these organizations to use HPC. Collaborative programs such as Intel® Cluster Ready are lowering the barriers to HPC by helping to ensure interoperability, simplify procurement, reduce time to productivity, and decrease the total cost of system ownership.

This is an exciting time to be part of the HPC community. We look forward to showing you how we are moving HPC forward.

Sponsored Links

Accelerate your science with Seneca
One of the first HPC providers installing a 4X NVIDIA Kepler K-20 cluster. Invites you to a free evaluation on Seneca’s NVIDIA K20 Kepler cluster, pre-loaded with AMBER, NAMD, LAMMPS

High-Performance Computing in Action
Businesses that want to be on the cutting edge of their industries are increasingly turning to high-performance computing (HPC) solutions to handle complex compute processes and speed up their rate of innovation. Download this Executive Brief to see how businesses in energy, life sciences and entertainment put HPC solutions to work in their operations.

May 17, 2013

May 16, 2013

May 15, 2013

May 14, 2013

May 13, 2013

May 10, 2013

May 09, 2013

May 08, 2013

May 07, 2013

May 06, 2013



Short Takes

Running Computational Fluid Dynamics in the Cloud

May 16, 2013 | When it comes to cloud, long distances mean unacceptably high latencies. Researchers from the University of Bonn in Germany examined those latency issues of doing CFD modeling in the cloud by utilizing a common CFD and its utilization in HPC instance types including both CPU and GPU cores of Amazon EC2.
Read more...

Computing the Physics of Bubbles

May 15, 2013 | Supercomputers at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) have worked on important computational problems such as collapse of the atomic state, the optimization of chemical catalysts, and now modeling popping bubbles.
Read more...

Internet2 Awards Program Seeks Innovative Applications

May 10, 2013 | Program provides cash awards up to $10,000 for the best open-source end-user applications deployed on 100G network.
Read more...

Floating Funding to Exascale Island

May 09, 2013 | The Japanese government has revealed its plans to best its previous K Computer efforts with what they hope will be the first exascale system...
Read more...

HPC and the True Cost of Cloud

May 08, 2013 | For engineers looking to leverage high-performance computing, the accessibility of a cloud-based approach is a powerful draw, but there are costs that may not be readily apparent.
Read more...

Sponsored Whitepapers

Best Practices in Big Data Storage

05/10/2013 | Cleversafe, Cray, DDN, NetApp, & Panasas | From Wall Street to Hollywood, drug discovery to homeland security, companies and organizations of all sizes and stripes are coming face to face with the challenges – and opportunities – afforded by Big Data. Before anyone can utilize these extraordinary data repositories, however, they must first harness and manage their data stores, and do so utilizing technologies that underscore affordability, security, and scalability.

Progress in Parallel: the Bull Parallel Programming Center

04/15/2013 | Bull | “50% of HPC users say their largest jobs scale to 120 cores or less.” How about yours? Are your codes ready to take advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s ultra-parallel HPC systems? Download this White Paper by Analysts Intersect360 Research to see what Bull and Intel’s Center for Excellence in Parallel Programming can do for your codes.

Sponsored Multimedia

SGI DMF ZeroWatt Disk Solution

In this demonstration of SGI DMF ZeroWatt disk solution, Dr. Eng Lim Goh, SGI CTO, discusses a function of SGI DMF software to reduce costs and power consumption in an exascale (Big Data) storage datacenter.

Cray CS300-AC Cluster Supercomputer Air Cooling Technology Video

The Cray CS300-AC cluster supercomputer offers energy efficient, air-cooled design based on modular, industry-standard platforms featuring the latest processor and network technologies and a wide range of datacenter cooling requirements.

SC12 Editorial Feature HPCwire Soundbite sponsored by ISC

HPC Job Bank


Featured Events


  • June 16, 2013 - June 20, 2013
    ISC'13
    Leipzig,
    Germany

  • June 17, 2013 - June 18, 2013
    Forecast 2013
    San Francisco, CA
    United States





HPCwire Events