Tag: supercomputing
Vector instructions, once a powerful performance innovation of supercomputing in the 1970s and 1980s became an obsolete technology in the 1990s. But like the mythical phoenix bird, vector instructions have arisen from the ashes. Here is the history of a technology that went from new to old then back to new.
Throughout the past year, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications has been celebrating its 30th anniversary. On Friday, Larry Smarr, whose unsolicited 1983 proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) begat NCSA in 1985 and helped spur NSF to create not one but five national centers for supercomputing, gave a celebratory talk at NCSA.
ARM and Fujitsu today announced a scalable vector extension (SVE) to the ARMv8-A architecture intended to enhance ARM capabilities in HPC workloads. Fujitsu is the lead silicon partner in the effort (so far) and will use ARM with SVE technology in its post K computer, Japan’s next flagship supercomputer planned for the 2020 timeframe. This is an important incremental step for ARM, which seeks to push more aggressively into mainstream and HPC server markets.
Materials science got a boost today when the Department of Energy announced it would invest $16 million over the next four years to accelerate the design of new materials “through use of supercomputers.” The program will focus on software development with an eye towards being able to eventually run on exascale machines. Two four-year projects Read more…
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced today that it will acquire rival HPC server maker SGI for $7.75 per share, or about $275 million, inclusive of cash and debt. The deal ends the seven-year reprieve that kept the SGI banner flying after Rackable Systems purchased the bankrupt Silicon Graphics Inc. for $25 million in 2009 and assumed the SGI brand. Bringing SGI into its fold bolsters HPE’s high-performance computing and data analytics capabilities and expands its position…
Cray’s annual revenue projections took a hit on Tuesday as processor delays, market uncertainties, and a recent “smoke event” lead the supercomputing company to reduce its FY16 guidance by $175 million. Cray now expects total yearly revenue to be in the $650 million range, down from its previous estimate of $825 million. In 2015, the company Read more…
South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Program Director Kagiso Chikane recently welcomed 100 guests to the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) in Cape Town for the dedication of the fastest computer on the African continent. “Lengau,” which means “Cheetah” in the African Setswana language, ranked 121 on the June TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
Sometimes lost in the discussion around big data is the fact that big science has long generated huge data sets. “In fact, large-scale simulations that run on leadership-class supercomputers work at such high speeds and resolution that they generate unprecedented amounts of data. The size of these datasets—ranging from a few gigabytes to hundreds of Read more…
You may have heard the rumors, but now it’s official: China has built and deployed a 93 petaflops LINPACK (125 petaflops peak) Chinese-made supercomputer at its Wuxi Supercomputer Center, near Shanghai. A few days ago HPCwire received an advance copy of a report on the new system prepared by TOP500 author Jack Dongarra detailing the feeds and speeds and Read more…
Jack Dongarra, one of today’s most distinguished HPC leaders, is adding two awards to his long list. The Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) recently honored Dongarra with the High Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing Achievement Award at the annual High Performance and Distributed Computing Conference in Kyoto, Japan, while the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) will bestow him with the Super Computing (SC) 2016 Test of Time Award at its conference in November.
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