Feature Articles from sc11

Parallel File System OrangeFS Starts to Build a Following

(11/18/2011) - If you thought Lustre and GPFS were your only two choices for a high performance, scalable parallel file system, then you've probably never heard of OrangeFS. We talked with three of the file system's developers and backers to discuss the unique attributes of OrangeFS and how it's being used in the field.
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The Bumpy Road to Exascale: A Q&A with Thomas Sterling

(11/17/2011) - With a number of government and commercial exascale projects in full swing, SC11 has provided a convenient venue for vendors, academics and government types to tout their vision of the future of supercomputing. To get a broad perspective on these efforts, we spoke with Thomas Sterling, Professor of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, and one of the foremost experts on supercomputing architectures.
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Integrated Photonics Coming of Age

(11/17/2011) - Advances in silicon photonic integration will present an opportunity for hardware engineers to reconsider basic computer designs. That topic is the theme of a Disruptive Technology session at SC11 on Thursday conducted by Keren Bergman of Columbia University and Nadya Bliss of MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Prior to the conference, we asked Bergen and Bliss to discuss the technology issues surrounding integrated photonics and how it could impact computer systems, including HPC machines.
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Startup Aims to Bring Parallel Applications to the Masses

(11/16/2011) - There are a number of young companies at SC11 this week debuting novel technologies. One of them, Advanced Cluster Systems, recently launched its first software product, with the rather bold name of Supercomputing Engine Technology. It promises one of the Holy Grails of HPC: to turn sequential applications into parallel ones.
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Women Still Struggle to Find Their Place in HPC

(11/16/2011) - Although women comprise the majority of the United States labor force, 60 percent of college graduates in developed countries, most of the internet users, and start more than half of the new companies created each year in the US, they have made surprisingly few inroads into high performance computing. On Thursday at SC11, there will be two sessions where HPC community members can discuss these issues and exchange ideas on how to change the status quo.
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Intel Sets High Water Mark of One Teraflop with 'Knights Corner'

(11/16/2011) - At SC11 in Seattle, Intel showed off an early silicon version of Intel's Many Integrated Core (MIC) "Knight Corner," the codename for its first commercial product based on their MIC architecture. The demonstration was performed for the benefit of reporters and analysts, who got to see the new chip in action at a press briefing here on Tuesday afternoon.
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Making High Performance Computing Special -- the ACM Way

(11/15/2011) - This month ACM, the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, announced the launch of its newest Special Interest Group, SIGHPC. HPCwire caught up with Cherri Pancake, the first Chair of SIGHPC, to get her take on what the group is today, and the role she sees for it in the future of the high performance computing community.
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Ethernet Innovations Take Aim at HPC

(11/15/2011) - John D’Ambrosia, chair of the Ethernet Alliance weighed in on the focus of the Ethernet Alliance at SC11, expanding on their interoperability goals and describing the overall role of Ethernet technologies in HPC.
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TOP500 Shows Signs of Stagnation

(11/14/2011) - For the first time since the TOP500 group began publishing their list of the fastest computers in the world, there was no turnover in the top 10 machines. In fact, the only change at the top was the new record Linpack mark set by the now fully deployed K Computer at RIKEN.
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NCSA Signs Up Cray for Blue Waters Redo

(11/14/2011) - The National Center for Supercomputing Applications has awarded Cray a $188 million contract to complete the NSF-funded Blue Waters supercomputer project at the University of Illinois. An 11.5 petaflops Cray XE6/XK6 hybrid system outfitted with AMD CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs will be deployed next year and become the center's petascale resource for open science and engineering. The much-anticipated deal was announced on Monday, just as the Supercomputing Conference (SC11) in Seattle got underway.
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SGI Unveils Faster, Denser ICE Machine for Supercomputing

(11/14/2011) - Supercomputer maker SGI has launched its next generation ICE supercomputer, the company's flagship scale-out HPC cluster platform. Using Intel's latest Xeon processors, ICE-X is up to two and half times as dense and twice as fast as the current ICE 8400 system.
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Fujitsu's Next-Generation Super to Debut in Japan

(11/14/2011) - A week after launching the PRIMEHPC FX10, Fujitsu has announced that first installation of the new system will go to the Information Technology Center at the University of Tokyo. According to the press release, the 4,800-node supercomputer will deliver 1.13 petaflops peak when it boots up in April 2012.
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The Top Ten Myths of SC

(11/11/2011) - SC11, the world’s greatest yearly supercomputing show rolls into Seattle this week. To help prepare you for the big week, we have put together a list of the top 10 myths of the phenomenon that is SC. With a little discussion of each, hopefully we will bring out the good, the bad, the hopes and realities of SC. And, maybe, along the way we’ll see why SC matters so much to our community.
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Big Data Rains Down on Seattle

(10/20/2011) - At SC11 in Seattle, the stage is set for data-intensive computing to steal the show. This year's theme correlates directly to the "big data" trend that is reshaping enterprise and scientific computing. We give an insider's view of some of the top sessions for the big data crowd and a broader sense of how this year's conference is shaping up overall.
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