Isaac Lopez Searching for the Personal Supercomputing Killer App
Post Date: December 03, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: HPC Matters

I have always been a lover of technology. I was the type of kid who would spend hours on the Tandy computer at the local municipal library, trying to get it to do my bidding. So why am I so skeptical when I read about the emerging "personal supercomputer?"

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Addison Snell Feast or Famine: A Hungry Analyst's Review of SC08
Post Date: November 26, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: HPC Matters

It happens every year at the Supercomputing Conference and Expo, whether it's seafood in Seattle, pierogies in Pittsburgh, or anchos in Austin. Some days it's a feast, others a famine.

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Chris Willard What Makes a Supercomputer Super?
Post Date: November 13, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: HPC Matters

The announcement of each new TOP500 list and especially those with systems that break the triple order of magnitude barrier in FLOPS tend to get me thinking about the meaning of the term "supercomputer."

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Debbie Walsh HPC Horizons Community Member SPOTLIGHT
Post Date: November 12, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: HPC Matters

In order get to know our HPC Horizons members a little better, we have started this new column. For the first edition of HPC Horizons Community Member SPOTLIGHT, we introduce Laurence Liew, the Open Source Grid Development Centre Director at Platform Computing in Singapore.

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Chris Willard Traditional HPC and Edge HPC -- The Same Only Different
Post Date: November 11, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time
Blog: HPC Matters

Tabor Research is in the midst of conducting in depth end user interviews with organizations running or considering Edge HPC applications. As we have completed the initial interviews several similarities and difference between the two branches of high productivity computing have become apparent.

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Diane Lieberman Has the Joe Boat Sailed? Wanted: HPC Mascot
Post Date: October 22, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

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.

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Debra Goldfarb Riding the Storm
Post Date: October 08, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

We are all consumed, and rightly so, with the chaos rampaging the world economic system. And while I am not an economist, I don't believe it takes one to realize the systemic dynamics underway.

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Diane Lieberman Beep, Beep, Ka-Ching
Post Date: September 21, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

On the eve of the annual High Performance on Wall Street conference, it's ironic that the words "high performance" and "Wall Street" can be perceived as an oxymoron this week. Is it possible, though, that the very financial crisis we're in may bode well for increased investment in HPC?

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Isaac Lopez What Is the Metaverse and Should HPC Care?
Post Date: August 27, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

What happens when the physical and virtual worlds meet and meld into something entirely new and different? You get the Metaverse, that's what.

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Debbie Are You Ready for Spring Training?
Post Date: August 20, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

192 days and counting -- it's never too early to start planning for spring training! But, I'm not talking about baseball. The major leaguers I'm referring to are members of the HPC Horizons Community.

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Debra Goldfarb HPC: The Software Industry Gulag ... or More Pointedly, Where is SAP for the Rest of Us?
Post Date: August 13, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

If one were to categorize the enterprise software market as mature, robust, innovative -- and definitely 21st century -- as it races headstrong into the cloud -- how would one categorize the HPC software market? Not to throw stones, but you could easily put it in the circa 1980 timeframe and use terms like immature, cottage-like and definitely lacking investment. When you mention HPC to any of the venture guys, they run for the hills.

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Debra Goldfarb The Politics of Scarcity
Post Date: August 06, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

I had a recent conversation with a colleague under the auspices of delving into the future of high-performance technology and breakthrough applications, and it somehow morphed into a discussion on the topic of scarcity. More precisely, we began to talk about scarcity of natural resources and how it will ultimately transform behavior, technology, politics and the global economy on a mass scale.

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Addison Snell Field Research: Il Calcolo Tecnico-Scientifico in Italia
Post Date: July 30, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

When I saw the front-page article on HPCwire dealing with "cultural analytics" and a debate that originated in the Renaissance, I knew I had to learn more. Being a dedicated analyst, I flew immediately to Italy to check it out. Or maybe I was already in Italy on vacation and decided to check out the HPC scene while I was here.

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Chris Willard Is 'Partitioned HPC' an Oxymoron?
Post Date: July 24, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

Server partitioning -- one of the many implementations of IT virtualization -- has for the last half decade seen strong interest within commercial computing environments; meanwhile, HPC users have shown no great interest in the charms of partitioning. However, that may be changing; there are several trends causing HPC users to take another look at partitioning.

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Isaac Lopez It's the End of the World as We Know It?
Post Date: July 09, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

If you haven't heard yet, the world as we know it is about to end. Preparations are being made now. Don't bother getting your affairs in order -- that'll do you no good. To what can we attribute this impending doom? The good folks at CERN, who have engineered the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is set to go online this August.

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Debbie Walsh Don't be a Silent Observer
Post Date: July 02, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

Let's talk about what this blog is all about. It's about community. It's about getting to know you and giving you a way to communicate directly with us and, more importantly, with each other.

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Mike Bernhardt HPC Marketing - A Sign of the Times?
Post Date: June 25, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

If any of us question what's changing about HPC, all we need to do is look around us. The technology is always changing -- it always has been -- but today, there is a very clear "sign of the times" being reflected throughout the HPC landscape.

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Debra Goldfarb The Big Ugly
Post Date: June 24, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

Back at the Newport HPCC conference in 2007, I broached the sensitive topic of whether the current ultra-scale procurement programs were good for the HPC industry by driving innovation into the market; or were these programs, in fact, draining resources, margin and long term opportunity out of the market?

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Chris Willard What Makes a Supercomputer Super?
Post Date: June 15, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

The announcement of each new TOP500 list and especially those with systems that break the triple order of magnitude barrier in FLOPS tend to get me thinking about the meaning of the term "supercomputer."

• Read more...

Diane Lieberman Who's the Dinosaur Here?
Post Date: June 11, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

I recently asked my son, a first year Ph.D. Neuroscience student at a leading New England university, what he knows about high performance computing or supercomputing. His first response was (somewhat kidding), "Do you mean like the old Cray computer that was used in Jurassic Park?"

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Addison Snell Anticipating the Fall: Application Performance Has Chased Multicore's Speed Right Over a Cliff
Post Date: June 04, 2008 @ 9:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
Blog: HPC Matters

As systems transition to multicore processors, HPC application performance is heading off the cliff. So far, application performance hasn't dramatically suffered. Users are still satisfied with the performance they're getting. But the fall is coming.

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