Solving the Multicore Dilemma: An Interview with eXludus CEO Dale Geldart

Aug 02, 2010 | The increasing number of CPU cores raises issues regarding the relatively low utilization of the recent manycore CPUs, along with the potential increase in wasted energy, and the low degree of parallelization of many applications submitted to manycore-based servers. In light of these concerns, Wolfgang Gentzsch poses a series of questions to eXludus CEO Dale Geldart about the development of the multicore optimizer MCOPt.
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HPC Startup Takes a Shine to Lustre

Jul 29, 2010 | Lustre, the much-beloved open-source file system technology used by many of the top supercomputers in the world, has a new friend. Actually a whole new company. Whamcloud, a venture-funded startup based in upscale Danville, California, came out of hiding on Wednesday and announced its intentions to help carry the Lustre torch forward on Linux.
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The Week in Review

Jul 29, 2010 | Cray announces first multi-cabinet XE6 shipment; and SIGGRAPH brings raft of visualization-related announcements. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
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GPGPU Computing Demand Spurs Cloud Offering

Jul 27, 2010 | The world's largest public GPGPU computing on-demand service was launched this week at the Siggraph International Conference in Los Angeles. PEER 1 Hosting, a provider of IT infrastructure, has constructed a 128-GPU compute cloud that incorporates NVIDIA Tesla gear and mental image's RealityServer 3D Web platform.
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NOAA-ORNL Climate Research Collaboration Sets Lofty Goals for New Supercomputer

Jul 26, 2010 | A year ago, NOAA and DOE signed an agreement calling for closer cooperation between NOAA and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Jim Rogers, director of operations for the National Center for Computational Sciences at ORNL, discusses the agreement and the goals for the Climate Modeling and Research System (CMRS), the initial supercomputer chosen for the collaborative work.
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The Week in Review

Jul 22, 2010 | Dell partners with the University of Cambridge to launch an HPC Solution Center; a Dutch university supercomputer runs Bright Cluster Manager; and Fixstars Releases Yellow Dog Linux for CUDA. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
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Nimbus Goes After HPC Market with Disk-Priced Flash Array

Jul 20, 2010 | Nimbus Data Systems has unveiled its new high-density enterprise flash memory system, delivering 10 terabytes of solid state capacity per 2U shelf. The S1000 can scale up to 250 TB per system and is being priced to challenge spinning disk appliances head on. For HPC and other enterprise users looking to turbo-charge performance of terascale-sized data sets, Nimbus offers a compelling case for making the switch to flash technology.
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T-Platforms Announces 'Fermi' GPU-Equipped Blades

Jul 18, 2010 | Russian HPC cluster vendor T-Platforms says it will be adding NVIDIA's Tesla 20-series (Fermi-class) GPUs into its latest blade offering. According to the company, the GPGPU blade will feature a "very high computing density design along with aggressive power-saving schemes for heterogeneous environments."
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The Week in Review

Jul 15, 2010 | NASA Center for Climate Simulation doubles computational power with new Dell PowerEdge servers; Amazon introduces HPC-level computing on demand; and Carnegie Mellon announces $7 million initiative aimed at boosting computer science enrollment. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
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Amazon Climbs Into the HPC Arena

Jul 14, 2010 | Amazon's cloud platform got a high performance boost this week with the announcement of its Cluster Compute Instances (CCI). CCI specifically targets HPC workloads, incorporating high-end CPU horsepower and a low-latency interconnect fabric into the company's popular EC2 computing on-demand offering. The new capability welcomes HPC into the most well-recognized public cloud in the world.
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Recomputing the Sky

Jul 13, 2010 | The Universe might be expanding, but at least it's getting easier to see. On Monday, at the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, the software maker unveiled the largest and clearest image of the night sky ever assembled. This so-called "TeraPixel" sky map was generated with the help of some of Microsoft's latest HPC and parallel software assets.
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French Firm Brews Parallel Java Offering

Jul 08, 2010 | Yet another software toolmaker has offered up its solution to the parallel programming crisis. This week, French software vendor Ateji released a Java solution for multicore CPUs and multiprocessor server environments. Ateji PX for Java is aimed at developers who want to take advantage of current and future computer architectures by moving their legacy codes into the parallel realm.
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The Week in Review

Jul 08, 2010 | OCF doubles computing power for University of Edinburg researchers; and Aquasar system with innovative water-cooling technology deploys at ETH Zurich. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
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Kudos for CUDA

Jul 06, 2010 | It's been almost three years since GPU computing broke into the mainstream of HPC with the introduction of NVIDIA's CUDA API in September 2007. Adoption of the technology since then has proceeded at a surprisingly strong and steady pace. The relatively-rapid adoption of CUDA by a community not known for the rapid adoption of much of anything is a noteworthy signal.
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Digipede Sticks to Its Grid Computing Roots

Jul 01, 2010 | Grid computing vendor Digipede is something of an enigma in the HPC world. The company has built its distributed computing offering, Digipede Network, atop the highly popular Windows/.NET platform, and in the process has become an unrepentant Microsoft booster. For traditional HPC users, anything not Linux plus MPI or OpenMP is mostly looked upon as an eccentricity, and in some corners, partnering up with Microsoft is seen as treason.
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The Week in Review

Jul 01, 2010 | Green500 sees increased energy efficiency from accelerator-based supercomputers; EGEE passes Europe's grid torch to the new European Grid Infrastructure, EGI, before saying so long. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
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Quantum Computer Simulation: New World Record on JUGENE

Jun 28, 2010 | The civil engineer Konrad Zuse was born in Berlin exactly 100 years ago. In 1941, he built the world's first computer. And thanks to his pioneering work, the scientists at the Jülich Supercomputing Center have now succeeded in setting a world record by simulating the largest quantum computer system with 42 qubits.
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The Week in Review

Jun 24, 2010 | Tokyo Tech releases more details on Tsumabe 2.0 in anticipation of fall startup; and several Web-centric servers make their debut. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
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PathScale Looks to One-Up CUDA, OpenCL with New GPU Compiler

Jun 24, 2010 | HPC compiler maker PathScale has unveiled ENZO, a new GPU software development suite aimed at the high performance computing space. The solution includes a home-grown compiler, runtime system, and device driver. ENZO is being built for performance from top to bottom and will initially target NVIDIA's high-end GPUs.
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AMD Chases NVIDIA with New FireStream GPU Offerings

Jun 23, 2010 | AMD today announced its next-generation FireStream GPU accelerator boards for HPC and other technical computing applications. The FireStream 9350 and 9370 represent the company's attempt to match the pace NVIDIA has set with its "Fermi" Tesla-20 GPU offerings launched this spring.
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High-End Visualization the Open Source Way

Jun 22, 2010 | Ultimately supercomputing is a visual endeavor. Turning the so-called "data deluge" into pretty pictures and animations has always been the most straightforward way to extract insight from HPC simulations. But with the size of simulation datasets growing in tandem with the size of supercomputers, visualization has never been more challenging.
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The Week in Review

Jun 17, 2010 | Appro deploys Linux cluster testbed at Lawrence Livermore; SeaMicro introduces redesigned x86 architecture with launch of Internet-optimized server. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
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The Coming 'C' Change in Datacenters

Jun 15, 2010 | The good folks at the Uptime Institute estimate that datacenter CO2 emissions will quadruple between 2010 and 2020; also that annual global datacenter CO2 emissions are already on par with the CO2 emissions of the airline industry, or even entire countries. Maybe we should put datacenters in airplanes and keep all the CO2 flying around.
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For AMD, All Paths Lead to CPU-GPU Fusion

Jun 14, 2010 | AMD has not been at the forefront of the emerging GPU computing paradigm, but the company's upcoming Fusion processors and its commitment to OpenCL could provide a compelling strategy for bringing graphics acceleration to high performance computing.
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Cray Sets Sights On Cascade Supercomputer, Exascale Milestone

Jun 10, 2010 | At last week's International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Hamburg, HPCwire sat down with Cray CTO Steve Scott to talk about life after Baker, where he revealed the company's plans for its upcoming "Cascade" supercomputer and how the exascale landscape is shaping up.
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