The Return of High-End Crusader

By Michael Feldman

May 5, 2006

This week's issue contains an eclectic mix of news and features from the world of high performance computing. We've covered everything from DARPA's HPCS petascale program to modeling potato chips. In between, we touch on HyperTransport, Dutch clusters, and nanoelectronics. Here are some highlights.

He's back

This issue marks the return of the High-End Crusader (HEC), whose unique perspective has been missing from HPCwire for much too long. For our newer readers, HEC is probably our most famous, and certainly our most mysterious contributing editor. He keeps his identity hidden so that he can freely express his opinions without regard for HPC political correctness. Since I'm sworn to secrecy I can't tell you very much about him, but a few tidbits can be revealed:

— HEC is probably one of the most patriotic people I know (he makes Thomas Jefferson look like a flag-burner). So when he talks about national security computing issues, both his head and heart are involved.

– As a hardcore HPC'er, he loves “Big Iron,” but not to the point that he can't appreciate a nice cluster when he sees one (see below).

– His favorite television program is “Cold Case.” Not a huge surprise. Definitely a show for the analytic type.

– He says he can't live without Google, but doesn't consider himself a geek. Allegedly he doesn't have a fully functional computer at home.

The stuff I can't reveal would fill the rest of this article. Suffice it to say, he's one of the most interesting characters that I've met in the HPC universe.

Our recent coverage of DARPA's HPCS initiative (April 7) left the High-End Crusader wanting more — much more. In our lead feature this week, HEC offers his perspectives on DARPA's HPCS initiative and tells us what he believes the government and the vendors should be focusing on. In the process, he gives us a lesson on heterogeneity and on some of the subtler aspects of parallelism and locality. Heady stuff. But worth reading — if only to witness HEC admit that “clusters remain very cost effective for easily localizable applications.”

HyperTransport Part III

The HyperTransport 3.0 spec was released last week and yours truly got the chance to talk with Mario Cavalli, general manager for the HyperTransport Consortium and David Rich, the Consortium's president, about its new capabilities. Our feature article gives some background of the HyperTransport technology and describes some of the new features.

For those of you unfamiliar with the technology, HyperTransport is an elegant, high-performance system interconnect that is designed to replace the older front-side bus architecture used in many systems today. Since HyperTransport's introduction in 64-bit AMD processors, it has steadily gained momentum in the IT industry. As the basis of AMD's Direct Connect Architecture, HyperTransport has been instrumental in propelling the Opteron's success in the marketplace. Intel, the notable non-adopter of HyperTransport, is still developing its own interconnect, called CSI. Originally scheduled for release next year, the latest rumor is that CSI won't be available until 2008; but Intel has said nothing publicly.

Dutch clusters comes up to speed — and then some

This week's announcement about the Dutch DAS-3 grid (Distributed ASCI Supercomputer) illustrates the worldwide commitment to advancing distributed computing. ClusterVision, which specializes in Linux supercomputer clusters, has been awarded the contract to build the grid.

A Myricom Myri-10G network will provide connections between the servers in four of the five DAS clusters, as well as connections to the grid's SURFnet optical backbone. The announcement provided me with the opportunity to speak with Chuck Seitz, Myricom founder and CEO. According to Seitz, when this system becomes operational in August it's going to be “the fastest grid of clusters in the world.” In an upcoming issue of HPCwire, I'll be providing more in-depth coverage of this project and discuss how Myricom sees it as a new model for building distributed computing networks.

HPC for the rest of us

For those of you who missed our special Newportwire coverage of the High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Conference at the end of March, this week I've republished a feature article from that publication about the use of HPC at Procter and Gamble. I talked to Tom Lange, Director of Modeling and Simulation at P&G and he revealed some of the high performance modeling work being done behind the scenes at the company. Tom's very outspoken about the commercial use of HPC and gives us his unique end-user perspective. Besides that, the P&G story is a great example of how HPC is insinuating itself into our everyday lives.

Nano-news

Seems like there's always at least one “gee whiz” article in the issue. This week there's two.

In the first announcement, a UCLA team claims to have made a breakthrough in semiconductor spin-wave technology by developing a technology they call “spin-wave buses.” The bus uses an electron's spin wave rather than its electrical charge to transfer information, which apparently is a much more efficient way to push data around. The text that caught my attention was the following:

“UCLA Engineering's team contends that the creation and detection of spin-wave packets in nanostructures can be used efficiently to perform massively parallel computational operations, allowing for the design of the first practical, fully interconnected network of processors on a single chip.”

Meanwhile on the East Coast, researchers at University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University and Harvard University announced a novel way to create nanoscale memory. The group has proposed a method that combines nanowires and water to create ultra-dense memory devices. Here's the money quote:

“Though a scheme for the dense arrangement and addressing of these nanowires remains to be developed, such an approach would enable a storage density of more than 100,000 terabits per cubic centimeter. If this memory density can be realized commercially, a device the size of an iPod nano could hold enough MP3 music to play for 300,000 years without repeating a song or enough DVD quality video to play movies for 10,000 years without repetition.”

Now that's entertainment!

—-

As always, comments about HPCwire are welcomed and encouraged. Write to me, Michael Feldman, at [email protected].

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