GRID DOMINATES FLOOR AT ORACLE OpenWorld

By By Derrick Harris

December 13, 2004

If I could take only one thing from Oracle OpenWorld this year, it would have to be that enterprise Grid computing is here to stay. While Grid was only a sidenote to last year's conference (10g, after all, had been released only a few months prior), it was definitely the focal point of this year's event.

The role of Grids in the enterprise was made crystal clear as I walked on to the show floor for the first time. Booth's from some of IT's biggest players dominated the scenery, and almost all of them left no doubt as to where they stand on the idea of Grid computing. While it was no surprise to see Grid stalwarts like Sun and IBM espousing Grid's benefits, it was a little shocking to see companies like NetApp, Dell and EMC (even though two of the three are members of Project MegaGrid) making such a strong case.

Speaking of Project MegaGrid, that also made some waves at the show. Four HUGE vendors (Oracle, Intel, Dell, EMC) joined forces to promote a unified Grid offering, and it definitely drew attention. However, all that glitters is not necessarily gold. See “DELL, EMC, INTEL, ORACLE LAUNCH 'PROJECT MegaGrid'” (article 104384) in this week's issue for complete project details, as well as the one question that begs to be asked in the wake of such an announcement.

However, the Grid motif did not end in the exhibition hall. There were numerous sessions and tracks on Grid, and executives at many booths were more than happy to discuss it. Most noticeable to me however, were the three keynote speakers I was able to see, who spoke at length about how business stand to benefit from not only Oracle 10g, but from enterprise Grids in general.

Chuck Rozwat, Oracle's executive vice president of server technologies, used his time on stage to discuss not only Oracle 10g Release 2, but also some of the things that led to enterprise Grid making such great leaps in 2004. There was a shared industry vision over the last year, he said, that included the mass production of blade servers, standards for Java and XML (among others), the release of Linux 3.0, and the formation of the EGA. These all played a role in the current state of enterprise Grid computing.

Sun CEO Scott McNealy also gave a keynote, and he made a point to say “Grid” as much as possible. In fact, McNealy asked his management team (a magic 8-ball), “Will Larry Ellison invite me back if I don't say the word 'Grid' every seventh word in my speech?”

The 8-ball, by the way, eventually said “yes.”

And, in between pot shots at Intel, Dell, HP, Microsoft and even Oracle, to name a few, McNealy talked about the levels of IT enlightenment, in which utility computing is the fifth, and highest, level. This led into discussion of Sun's $1/CPU/Hour program which was announced a few months back, and is an integral part of Sun's Grid strategy.

Before he ended, though, McNealy made one final attempt to please Ellison. When touting Sun's new SPARC processor (code-named Niagara), which he called a “Grid on a chip,” McNealy mentioned that it you string a few together, you have “Grids Gridded.”

“How's that, Larry,” he asked.

But what about Ellison?

Well, he did not disappoint those who expected a lot of Grid talk. Ellison talked at length about the necessary migration from hundreds or thousands of separate databases to one unified, Grid-based data hub. The only way to consolidate reliably, which means it never breaks, is Grid, he said.

Ellison spoke quite a bit about the worldwide credit data hub, which allows all credit issuers around the world to instantly know what someone's credit history looks like. However, this is obviously not the only area where this type of Grid-based data hub would be beneficial. Logistics companies, like UPS, FedEx, etc., could use this technology, as could police departments and the federal government in fighting terrorism.

Grid computing is dramatically faster than old-fashioned mainframe computing, he said, and IBM mainframes are just that — old-fashioned.

“Mainframes have been the gold standard for performance for 40 years,” Ellison said, “but no longer.”

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