The Week in Review

By John E. West

June 29, 2007

Here’s a collection of highlights, selected totally subjectively, from this week’s HPC news stream as reported at insideHPC.com and HPCwire.

>>10 words and a link

Both Cluster Resources and Platform take aim at making clusters easier to deploy;
http://insidehpc.com/2007/06/26/cluster-resources-escalante-to-make-deploying-hpc-systems-point-and-click-simple/ and
http://insidehpc.com/2007/06/27/intels-cluster-ready-certification/.

HP and Microsoft tighten partnership around CCS 2003 solutions, centers formed;
http://insidehpc.com/2007/06/26/hp-and-microsoft-tighten-partnership/

Savas Parastatidis posts presentations from the Microsoft-sponsored Manycore Computing Workshop;
http://insidehpc.com/2007/06/26/manycore-workshop-presentations-online/

Bull joins Europe’s ParMA team trying to get most out of multi-core;
http://insidehpc.com/2007/06/26/europe-working-to-get-at-the-power-of-multi-core-computers/

HP, Intel each working on helping us avert multi-core crisis;
http://insidehpc.com/2007/06/27/hps-multi-core-optimization-program/ and
http://insidehpc.com/2007/06/26/intel-tries-to-teach-us-out-of-the-software-crisis/

>>HPC Hardware: it now goes to 11

(It’s not every HPC news source that gives you Spinal Tap references in headlines.)

Lot’s of hardware announcements this week at ISC in Dresden that Michael and others have covered very well in this issue and in daily news on the HPCwire website. So here are some quick facts that you’ll need to get you through your next vendor cocktail party.

>>Microsoft’s HPC business, all in one release

Well, if you wanted to shop for all your Microsoft HPC product strategy news in one place, they’ve just created the press release for you (http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1635234.html). I believe in the spirit of what they’re doing, so let’s wade through together, shall we? First, this is really three press releases in one.

Part one: The Burton

Like The Donald, only with more reasonable hair. From the release:

“In a keynote address at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany, Microsoft technical fellow Dr. Burton Smith talked about new approaches to software development where everyday computer programs must be able to execute in parallel on multiple microprocessor cores, allowing developers to build more powerful, humanistic software applications that incorporate speech, conversation, rich visualization and anticipatory execution of tasks. The many-core inflection point was presented as a new challenge for the computing industry, namely general-purpose parallel computing.”

Multi-core, manycore, software problem. Good stuff.

Part two: Windows CCS adoption

“Since general availability in August 2006, Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS) 2003 has been adopted in financial services, manufacturing, the oil and gas industry, digital content creation, and biosciences, with HPC cluster deployments ranging in size from distributed departmental clusters to shared clusters as large as 7,000 nodes.”

Obviously lots of enterprise take up, with a big hit in the financial sector (cross-verified by the success companies like Digipede are having with their .NET-based enterprise HPC offerings). A surprise to me was the HPTC take up. It makes sense, though, since a lot of the new HPTC users we get in our center are porting codes they developed during their PhD research on — wait for it — Windows machines. Moving from Windows XP to CCS has got to be easier than moving from XP to, say, Catamount.

The release also has a long list of well-known vendors whose products support CCS these days. And then there’s the hardware vendors that have started offering CCS pre-installed. Most of these were already announced, but here’s your crib sheet if you haven’t been following along:

“These vendors include Bull SAS, Dell Inc., Equus, Fujitsu Ltd., HP, HPC Systems Inc., IBM Corp., NEC Corp., SGI, Supermicro Computer Inc., TeamHPC (a division of M&A Technology), Tyan Computer Corp., and Visual Technologies Inc.”

Part three: The List

Oh, don’t get all uppity and “what list?” with me…you know what list.

Microsoft CCS 2003 is under the hood of two machines on the Top500, but I’m only giving them credit for one: number 193, owned by Mitsubishi UFJ Securities. Number 106 is their own machine at Microsoft’s datacenter in Tukwila, Wash.

They also announced partnerships and reseller agreements with a slew of partners this week, including HP (http://insidehpc.com/2007/06/26/hp-and-microsoft-tighten-partnership/), Scali (http://insidehpc.com/2007/06/26/a-bushel-basketful-of-scali-news/) and others.

Windows CCS does appear to be enjoying some momentum.

>>TotalView revs, adds support for new hardware

TotalView has revved their eponymous debugger this week to version 8.2. Highlights of the new features include support for hardware from SiCortex, Cray (XT4), and Mac, along with support for Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu.

The company also announced that it is working with IBM to bring TotalView to IBM’s new Cell-based QS20 BladeCenter Cell Broadband Engine platform, something sure to be of interest in the financial sector and DOE. More at http://www.totalviewtech.com/press_release.htm?id=78.

—–

John West summarizes the headlines in HPC every day at insideHPC.com, and writes on leadership and career issues for technology professionals at InfoWorld and on his own blog at onlytraitofaleader.com. You can contact him 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