Monday, October 27, 2014

IBM Gets out the Chip Fab Business

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team looks at IBM's plans to hand off its microelectronics unit to Global Foundries.

Is Big Blue on the right track? While Dan believes they're doing what they need to do, Henry thinks they need to completely retool the company like they did back in 1993.

Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

Friday, October 24, 2014

Looking Forward to the StartupHPC Meetup at SC14

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team previews the StartupHPC Meetup at SC14.

Does your Startup have ties to High Performance Computing? SC14 will be in New Orleans this year, and we are holding our first meetup on Nov 17th in New Orleans. Please come, meet like minded people, listen to industry notables, and kick off StartupHPC as a support community.

Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

Sunday, October 12, 2014

AWS Profitability - Ready for the Cloud Apocalypse?

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team discuss the possibility of a future where the Big 3 (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) figure out that Cloud is not profitable and pull the plug. If that Cloud Apocalypse sounds far fetched, check out these recent news nuggets:
  • An article in The Register that describes how Amazon lost money despite $20 Billion in revenue.
  • Business Week says that Amazon’s cloud unit, AWS, is one of the fastest-growing software businesses of all time, as Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Ashlee Vance recently wrote. It’s also in a hotly contested market. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft (MSFT) have been slashing prices to lure customers from one another.
  • The Wall Street Journal says that "The developments point to the possibility that profit margins in Amazon's cloud unit—believed to be much higher than its online retailing business—face a long-term squeeze that add to investor concerns about the company's profitability."
If you're more into numbers, the team has put together a spreadsheet of AWS revenue that does not paint a rosy picture.

Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

Sunday, October 5, 2014

DSPs for Systems Intelligence at Paypal

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team discusses a new Paypal project that is leveraging TI Keystone DSP processors for systems intelligence.

Paypal has developed a novel approach to systems intelligence. By analyzing their chaotic real-time server data, they can produce organized, intelligent results using HP’s Moonshot server powered by TI DSP processors.

Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed