PARABON TRIES TO EXPAND SUPERCOMPUTING MARKETS

November 9, 2000

by Steven Witucki, assistant editor LIVEwire

Dallas, Texas — Most research that requires massive computational power goes unanswered because high performance computing has been priced far out of reach. Parabon Computation, Inc. has developed a solution to this problem. Parabon’s Frontier computing platform hopes to provide the power of distributed computing to any developer or independent software vendor.

The Frontier software development kit was introduced this week at SC2000 in Dallas, Texas. Steve Armentrout, Ph.D., the President and CEO of Parabon, attended the conference. Joining him was Mark Weitner, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Parabon. The two took time during the conference to speak with HPCwire.

HPCwire: Is Frontier available via the Internet?

WEITNER: This is downloadable from the web. Obviously what we’re trying to do is encourage folks to understand our API (and) understand our software development environment. To be able to process it via our Internet network requires a subscription. Individuals essentially get charged based on the amount of power that they process across our Internet network.

When programs are submitted, they’re actually tasked out to individual computers and workstations. Right now I think we have about 15,000 registered downloads around the world. Individuals have downloaded this application which we call Pioneer to their workstations. This is a Java application. When they download this, they get the application as well as a Java virtual machine. So when they connect to the Internet. . .under the coverage, their machine will connect to our server. If it has completed tasks that have already processed while the computer is idle, it will send those tasks back to us. We register it and log it in, (and) put it in a cue for any individual customer who has submitted programs.

HPCwire: Tell us about some of Parabon’s philanthropic endeavors.

WEITNER: We support a program called “Compute Against Cancer” and up until recently, the majority of paths that were processed across our network were cancer related research projects. We’re working with the National Cancer Institute that’s doing a cancer cell study. In the beginning, the majority of folks that downloaded Pioneer did it to help support cancer. We’re actually in the process of signing up a series of non-profit cancer organizations to become affiliate partners, and we hope to have our first one signed up early next week.

HPCwire: Tell us more about Frontier.

ARMENTROUT: The real value of the (Frontier) platform is being able to scale so quickly. I can go anywhere on the planet to write and run codes across Frontier. We’re trying to bring to the desktop – with the same ease with which you would send an e-mail – the ability to drive ten or ten thousand machines. (This has) profound implications for the consumer, because this is the first time they’ve ever been able to buy (power) “by the slice”, so to speak.

HPCwire: So the goal would be to bring supercomputing power to anyone who has access to the web.

ARMENTROUT: Yes. Absolutely. And to change the way we think about buying and selling computation. Right now, you have to have an enormous up front (cost) if you want to get in the game. That limits the liquidity in the market. “I can’t get in because of this up front cost until I can really justify to my organization that $500,000 is worth it.” Well, if you bring down those barriers, if you let folks get in at small increments, suddenly you open this up to a market that has never had access before. So we’ve taken away the access barrier – you can sit at your desktop and do this – and we’ve taken down the monetary barrier – you can buy it by the drink. So we’re really trying to bring high performance computation to a market that’s never enjoyed it before.

An important point is that we don’t own hardware. We’re not in the business of owning hardware. We rent or lease or buy time from individuals and companies that wish to sell us idle time. So therin lies the power of the model. If you go back to the earliest days of computing, they would sell you time on the mainframe. This is the same model, except we don’t want to own the mainframes. There’s no reason to. The value is in intermediating this market that right now has all these “frictions” in it. So you bring those frictions down, you bring supply to the demand that exists, and you create added value for everyone involved.

People in organizations need bursts of computational power. They need a lot, they need it now, and (then) they don’t need it for a couple of days. You can see this. . .with your own desktop machine. Most of the time your machine is idle, but occasionally you sit down and fire up the word processor. . . and that CPU works like crazy for a few nanoseconds and then back down. Clock that through time (and) what you see is very “peaky” CPU usage. Your demand is very peaky, and yet what do computers deliver to us? They deliver sustained, flat power. So some of the time, it’s not meeting your demands.

HPCwire: Are you aiming for a particular kind of client?

ARMENTROUT: The platform is completely horizontal as you might imagine, but our target protocols are the biotech industry and the finance industry. Those two verticals are in desperate need of more computation. We’re actually delivering not just the platform, but applications to serve those markets as well.

HPCwire: This sounds similar to SETI@Home, which involves using idle computer power to search for life in outer space.

ARMENTROUT: SETI@Home is an academic-based single point solution. What they created there was a screensaver to do a single calculation. To use that as a point of contrast, when you download Pioneer, Pioneer operates on your system like a screensaver. . .but it’s general purpose. One minute we might be doing stock prediction, the next minute weather prediction.

HPCwire: It depends on the particular application being run at the time.

ARMENTROUT: That’s right. Pioneer takes the next task it’s handed (and) works on it as it can, opportunistically.

HPCwire: Can clients see what kinds of computations are being performed on their machines?

ARMENTROUT: We have feature projects because of our philanthropic work, but on a moment to moment basis they do not. We give our clients anonymity. We need to do that in order to give everyone in the system security.

HPCwire: Tell us more about the benifits of Frontier.

ARMENTROUT: What it gives companies is the ability to use resources that they’ve already invested in. They’ve put, for example, 6000 machines in their building for all their staff to use, and right now those machines aren’t doing anything in their idle moments. The organization has research needs. If they put Pioneer on those machines, suddenly they have an instant supercomputing capability they didn’t have, and they didn’t have to lay out any extra hardware costs. So within an enterprise context,it gives an enormous return of investment.

Another advantage – and I think this is a significant one – is that Frontier is Java based. We’re able to run native code bases, but if you look at the productivity analysis of the industry, people using java are about twice as productive as those same individuals using C, C++ or Fortran. I was a C++ zealot my entire career until I found Java. It was like getting religion. We get a number of big wins for using Java, not the least of which is productivity. People will write and run applications and get results a lot faster (with Java). It’s a big win.

============================================================

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire