Podcast: Decision HPC Provides Business Analytics for Your Cluster

In this podcast, I interview Deepak Khosala, President of X-ISS (eXcellence in IS Solutions, Inc.). The company's HPC solutions range from complete outsourced system management to DecisionHPC, a web-based monitoring & analytics software package.

Many users of HPC systems are interested in maximizing system productivity and ensuring business goals are aligned with system usage. Decision HPC provides the tools to make informed business decisions and aid in the planning of future HPC computing resources. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * Subscribe on other Podcast Players.

Interview: A Sneak Peek at AMD's 16-core Bulldozer

In this podcast, I discuss AMD's position in the HPC market with John Fruehe, Director of Product Marketing for Server/Workstation products. John is an avid blogger at AMD and he offers his perspective on multicore, GPGPUs, the TOP500, and the pending 16-core AMD Bulldozer processors that will start shipping in 2011. Download the MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

Interview: Penguin On Demand is One Cloud that's All About HPC

In this podcast, Penguin Computing product manager Arend Dittmer shares his insights into what the company has learned from 18 months of Penguin on Demand. The POD cloud is all about HPC and they built it that way from ground up.

How does POD deal with the thorny issues of security, latency, Big Data, and predictable results? The answers might surprise you. Download the MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

Interview: CERN Bolsters Worldwide LHC Computing Grid with Brocade 100 GbE

In this podcast, we discuss the CERN's pending network upgrades to their Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid. My guests are Jean-Michel Jouanigot, Communication Systems Group Leader at CERN and Maria Iordache, HPC Business Development Manager from Brocade.

Brocade’s MLXe solution met our stringent requirements (we test products to destruction), and will not just deliver a solution for our immediate needs but also gives us a platform to 100 GbE when the time is right,” commented Jean-Michel Jouanigot, Communication Systems Group Leader, IT Department, at CERN. “I do not see our appetite for data waning in the future, so with the addition of the Brocade MLXe solution in our environment, I am confident we have a blueprint for success.”

Brocade MLXe Core Routers will help CERN share 15 petabytes of critical scientific data per year with 10,000 physicists across the globe. It's a daunting IT problem to say the least, and we also discuss the current status of the Large Hadron Collider and the how data flows through the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid. This has to be the biggest collaboration in history and I think it's a fascinating discussion for anyone interested in science. Download the MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

Interview: AMAX Showcases GPU Solutions & Personal Supercomputers at SC10

In this podcast, I discuss the latest HPC developments at AMAX with Matt Thauberger, the company's Corporate Technology Advisor, and Julia Shih, Strategic Alliance Manager. Download the MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

AMAX made a number of announcements around SC10 including:

• ServMax Xn-5801G High-Density GPGPU Cluster Solution is a 1792-GPU core server with 8 x86 sockets in a 5U enclosure.


• StorMax Ultra-Dense JBOD Expansion Storage with dual SAS 2.0 module fill-over design and 4 SAS 6Gb/sec ports. Features dual redundant power supply and is an ideal building block to scale out NAS or scale up NAS.


• ServMax GPGPU Personal Supercomputer is powered by the massively parallel CUDA architecture and supports four NVIDIA Tesla C2050 or C2070 GPUs transforming a workstation into the equivalent of a small cluster at 5% the power consumption and 10% the cost. It delivers an astounding 4.12 Teraflops of performance in a single chassis.


• ServMax GPGPU Supercomputing Server with 2.06 Teraflops of computing horsepower is the fastest 1U server available. Powered by the massively parallel CUDA architecture and Tesla GPU computing processors, it can seamlessly fit into existing HPC environments and is ideal for financial services applications.

Interview: Allinea Software Gears up for Exascale

In this podcast from SC10, we discuss recent developments from Allinea Software with Mike Fish, CEO, and Jacques Philouze, the company's VP of marketing. Download the MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

Allinea had a number of announcements at SC10 including:

• A big win at Taiwan’s National Center of High-performance Computing (NCHC) as part of a deal with Acer.

• Release of Allinea DDT version 2.6.1. Supports NVIDIA Toolkits 3.1 and 3.2. This latest version adds support for multiple GPU devices within the same node, in addition to the existing capabilities for debugging clusters of GPU systems. It also supports the latest hardware, with some of the newer features such as device function call and stepping into and out of nested functions on the Fermi hardware now possible.


• An expanded collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who have selected Allinea DDT as the debugger of choice for Hybrid GPU software - where few industry-strength tools exist.

Interview: LSI Rolls Out High-Density Storage

In this podcast, LSI's Steve Hochberg describes the company's newly announced high-density Engenio 2600-HD storage system, which consists of two LSITM 6Gb/s SAS-based controllers integrated into the new Engenio DE6600 high-density SAS drive enclosure. The system is capable of sustaining up to 4GB/s of throughput and housing up to 60 SAS drives in a 4U space.

The Lustre and General Parallel File System implementations found in today’s HPC market demand scalability in throughput and capacity without sacrificing data access," said Addison Snell, CEO, Intersect360 Research. "At the same time, HPC organizations need systems that can maximize the available data center floor space. The Engenio 2600-HD is designed for high performance and scalability in a dense architecture and is well positioned to meet the needs of a wide range of HPC customers."

You can check out LSI technologies at SC10 booth #2946. Download the MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

Interview: HP's Marc Hamilton on Record GPU Efficiency at SC10

In this podcast, Marc Hamilton, HP's Vice President of HPC gives us a summary of the company's announcements and TOP500 results, including the #4 Tsubame 2 system at Tokyo Tech. Download the MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

Interview: Supermicro Fires Up Many-Core Blades at SC10

In this podcast, I interview Tau Leng, GM of Supermicro. Of note is Supermicro's announcement of a blade enclosure that has up to 2,880 x86 cores in a single 42U rack.

"When powered by new 12-core AMD Opteron 6100 Series (Socket G34) processors, the TwinBlade enables up to 2,880 processing cores, 240 SATA drives and 15TB of DDR3 memory per 42U rack. Featuring dual 40Gb/s InfiniBand, FCoE or 10GbE switches and dual 1/10GbE switches in one 7U enclosure, TwinBlade provides the highest performing I/O throughput and scalability in the industry and is a superb solution for high-performance computing (HPC), datacenter, enterprise and cloud computing deployments. With successful installations at CERN, PRACE, and other Fortune 100 organizations, the SuperBlade® has already become the preferred solution for a wide range of mission-critical applications."

The company has a number of other announcements this week around GPUs and scalable storage, so be sure to stop by their booth this week at booth #3829. Download the MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

Interview: Xyratex Ramps Up for Full-Scale Lustre Initiative

In this podcast, Mike Stolz and Steve Paulhus from Xyratex discuss their recent acquisition of ClusterStor and how the merged company plans to serve the Lustre community.

Xyratex has been around for a long time as an OEM company, and their storage products are re-labeled by nearly all the big-name HPC vendors out there.

Download the MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

Interview: SC10 Session for Women n HPC

In this podcast, I talk with the Oak Ridge team behind the SC10 Birds of a Feather session: Developing, Recruiting, and Retaining in Women in HPC. The idea for the session came from ORNL's Rebecca Hartman-Baker, and she recruited Judy Hill and Hai-Ah Nam to help bring it all together. As part of the discussion, each team member explains how they got into HPC and the challenges they faced along the way.

I think this is going to be one session not to miss at SC10. Women are still very much a minority in the HPC community and I think this kind of program is important. Things may be starting to change though. Anne Baker at ORNL has started up a Facebook page for women in HPC and projects like DotDiva.org are in place for getting young girls interested in computing. Download the Podcast MP3 or Subscribe on iTunes.

Interview: Pervasive Datarush Sets TeraCUPS Record on Big Data

According to their web site, Pervasive DataRush has a simple mission: Simplify How You Process and Analyze Big Data. The company's product is a parallel dataflow platform that eliminates performance bottlenecks in big data preparation and analytics.

Pervasive Datarush set a remarkable performance record recently on an SGI Altix system with 384 cores. These types of benchmarks are measured in CUPS (cell updates per second) and the company was able to achieve nearly one TeraCUPS of performance on the Smith-Waterman algorithm, which is popular in bioinformatics.

In this podcast, I catch up with Davin Potts to talk about how Pervasive Datarush leverages the parallel processing capabilities of multicore processors and SMP systems to deliver extreme performance on big data. Download the podcast or subscribe on iTunes.

Interview with Marc Hamilton, HP's Vice President of HPC

In this podcast, I interview Marc Hamilton, HP's new Vice President of High Performance Computing. Marc and I discuss his reasons for joining HP, Clustered GPU computing, and the new TSUBAME 2.0 HP system being deployed at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

For more information on TSUBAME 2.0, check out this slidecast presentation by Satoshi Matsuoka from the recent GPU Technology conference.

Interview with Bobbi Hazard, CEO, Massively Parallel Technologies

Last week, Massively Parallel Technologies unveiled their Blue Cheetah “application ecosystem software” for modern cloud computing environments. With their first product Blue Cheetah Cub now in beta release, the company hopes to provide an all new way of organizing a developer community, defining application software functionality, establishing collaboration, and constructing cloud applications.

In this podcast, I discuss Blue Cheetah with Bobbi Hazard, CEO Massively Parallel Technologies. What they’re doing is truly amazing, so check it out. Download the MP3.

New Exascale Report Tracks the Future: The Rich Report Podcast

In this podcast, I interview John West and Mike Bernhardt, founders of The Exascale Report. This new, subscription-based publication offers insider reporting on the technologies and initiatives that are in the works for Exascale computing in the coming decade.

"If you look at Exascale efforts internationally, you really find very little awareness among the different groups about what other people are doing," said John E. West, co-founder of The Exascale Report. "In many cases, it's not only that a group's awareness is limited to their own country, but it limited to their own project. Because these are very difficult to fund, very intensive scientific and engineering efforts to build these computers and the people working on this stuff are really just very busy and very focused. And so what The Exascale Report hopefully does is give an in-depth view to all of our readers on what's going on in all the other groups. So it will kind of bring the community together and hopefully stimulate some discussion that raises all boats at the same time."

Download the MP3.