John West talks with Cray CEO Peter Ungaro, Sun Microsystems EVP John Fowler, and SGI SVP Dave Parry on the SC08 show floor. John also corners some randomly chosen exhibitors and attendees and gives them our Two-Option Audio Quiz.

Peter Ungaro, President and CEO of Cray Inc.

During Monday’s Opening Gala HPCwire caught up with Pete Ungaro, President and CEO of Cray Inc. to talk about what they are showing on the exhibit floor this year. Pete emphasized Cray’s workhorse XT compute platform and its new ECOflex liquid and air-cooled technology for more energy efficient computations, and the CX-1, the personal supercomputer that had everyone saying “Cray” and “Windows” in the same sentence when it was announced earlier this fall. Pete also talked about Cray’s Innovation Lounge, and area of their booth that explores the legacy of technologies that Cray has introduced to the industry, going all the way back to the Cray-1.

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John Fowler, Executive Vice President for Systems at Sun Microsystems

HPCwire caught up with John Fowler, Executive Vice President for systems at Sun, to talk about what Sun is showing in their booth at SC08 this year, and where the company is headed. John highlighted compute based on Intel’s next generation Nehalem processor, innovative liquid and gas server cooling technologies, QDR InfiniBand, and high end storage featuring integrated flash disk. John also talked about Genesis, Sun’s new soon-to-be-announced large scale storage system, and the Java Chopper, Rich Brueckner’s tricked out Java-themed motorcycle.

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Dave Parry, Senior Vice President, Server Products and Operations at SGI

HPCwire caught up with SGI’s Dave Parry, Senior Vice President, Server Products and Operations at Monday’s opening gala to find out what SGI is talking about in their booth this week at SC08, starting with the next generation compute platforms based on Intel’s Nehalem processor and Molecule, SGI’s concept computer that could scale to 10,000 processors in a single rack. A big push this year is visualization for SGI, and there are glitzy large screen demos showing off the recently announced Silicon Graphics VUE suite. On the storage side, SGI is showing off its next generation storage products, the InfiniteStorage 15000 as well as the InfiniteStorage 6120 and high density trays for the 4600 line of storage. Finally, SGI is talking about its HPC management software, with version 1.0 of the Industrial Strength Linux Environment (ISLE) including its user portal for job launching and management, shipping to customers next month. Dave also talked about the Altix ICE system and Pleiades, the NASA Ames ICE system that just clocked in at number three on the 32nd Top500 list.

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Pop Quiz

SGI or Cray? Linux or Windows? GPU or FPGA? Find out what’s lurking in the subconscious of HPC executives, service providers, and maybe even Joe the Plumber as John West accosts random strangers on the show floor at SC08 and subjects them to the bright lights of HPCwire’s Two-Option Audio Quiz.

Download the audio (MP3).