Michael Dell Talks HPC

By Michael Feldman

November 18, 2008

Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell delivered the keynote address at the Supercomputing conference this morning in Austin, Texas, offering his perspective on where high performance computing is headed. We caught up with Dell shortly before the conference to get a preview of the keynote and to ask him about some of the hot-button issues that are driving the HPC industry today.

HPCwire: We’re almost certainly going to be in a recession in the U.S. and perhaps much of the world for the immediate future. How do you think that changes the HPC market? Or does it?

Michael DellMichael Dell: You’ll likely see an impact on funding. The global economic challenge is affecting every sector of society and business. It will place an even greater premium on productivity and efficiency — doing more with less. The democratization of supercomputing might even be accelerated as researchers and scientists take advantage of standards-based platforms to share compute capacity.

It’s likely we will see some consolidation in the IT sector — so decisions being made today need to be considered carefully. Dell is well positioned — with $9 billion in the bank — to provide needed stability here.

We can’t forget that supercomputing drives our competitiveness. Without it our economies don’t grow and some of the world’s most pressing challenges won’t get solved. Problems like advancing fusion power for more affordable and accessible energy and developing nanofiltration techniques that remove pollutants from water. Today, just one in six people worldwide has access to clean water. We must continue to invest in supercomputing capacity.

HPCwire: After more than 20 years, high-performance computing is certainly an established market. Yet the conventional wisdom is that a lot of demand goes unserved. What do you think has been holding back more users from tapping into HPC?

Dell: For too long, supercomputing was about proprietary technology. As a result, it was also about high cost.

And there were those who wanted to maintain an air of exclusivity. You can trace that back to the days of specialized processors and proprietary operating systems like Illiac IV and Cray 1. Things got a little better in the 1980s and 1990s.

But the real changes have come in the past decade during which the supercomputing community has really embraced open-source and standards. That’s clear when you look at what’s happened on the TOP500.

It’s rewarding to see that play out in broader access. You now have far more engineers, scientists and researchers worldwide focused on solving society’s biggest problems, which are also computational challenges.

HPCwire: What developments and technologies are going to drive this next wave of HPC?

Dell: There’s a lot going on beyond IT that’s making an impact. That includes factors like the economy, growing demand for commercial cloud computing in developed and emerging countries, and technology-industry consolidation. The growing influence of gaming technology and the public-private partnerships in the HPC space also are playing a role.

With regard to technology, you will see demand for even higher-density, more energy-efficient servers. I just saw a compelling figure on this – in 2003, a 1,260 node cluster with three GigaHertz processors sustained just under 10 teraflops. Today, we can get to just under 11 teraflops with 155 servers and 2.6 GigaHertz. That’s a really incredible trend, and it will continue.

Processors will continue to increase in speed and power at rapid rates, extending beyond servers to workstations. This week we’ll announce that we’re offering a Precision workstation that delivers a full Tflop of processing power.

The fourth wave is about standardization moving throughout the HPC ecosystem, into networking, storage, interconnects, tools and middleware. Dell is — literally — the platform for this movement — the center of the datacenter. So we play a unique role in working with our broad base of partners to drive standards throughout the stack.

HPCwire: With the drive toward hardware commoditization and system software standardization, what kinds of things can cluster vendors do to differentiate their products these days?

Dell: Sure, we want to drive standards and make IT simpler for the HPC community, but that starts with a clear understanding that what they do — and that their IT needs — are inherently complex.

We know that standards aren’t solutions in and of themselves. For HPC, it’s about standards combined with customization, and services that span the high-performance computing ecosystem. While traditional HPC customers like large universities might require heavy customization, a smaller customer might prefer to buy a bundle online. Those customers can use Dell’s online configuration tool to architect and purchase their cluster.

At the system level, an example is what we’re doing with AMD’s new Shanghai processor, taking chip-level performance and increasing it with Dual HT link designs. We’re doubling the available bandwidth between two processors for up to 12 percent better performance.

HPCwire: How concerned are customers, especially HPC customers, about energy-efficient computing?

Very. Supercomputing customers have always been focused on energy-efficiency. This manifests itself in two ways. First, ensuring the systems they are buying are the most efficient — and we are proud to lead here with what are the greenest products in the industry. Today, our servers use about 25 percent less power than four years ago. Second, we’re working with customers to tune systems to their unique workloads and environment. These highly-tuned and customized systems are at the heart of many of the large cloud infrastructures being built.

HPCwire: Cloud-based services seem to be getting traction in the broader enterprise market. How do you think cloud computing will play out in the HPC segment?

You’ll see more clouds in the high-performance computing space, without a doubt, but HPC customers will continue to have distinct needs.

We’ve actually created a special division for this. Our Data Center Solutions group’s sole focus is to tailor solutions for hyperscale-cloud environments. The goal is to work with customers to customize architectures based on exactly what they need, and nothing they don’t.

The DCS team has taken a lot of our HPC know-how to developing and deploying commercial cloud platforms, including Microsoft’s Windows Azure, Facebook, and Salesforce.com. Without a doubt, our work with HPC has taught us a great deal and helped position us for success in the commercial cloud.

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