Monday, November 27, 2017

Results from the SC17 Student Cluster Competition

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team goes over the results of the SC17 Student Cluster Competition. This year, Nanyang Technological University from Singapore took the Top Prize.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Sunday, November 26, 2017

A Recap of SC17 in Denver

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team describes the highlights of SC17 in Denver. Highlights includes the debut of ARM hardware for HPC, a Rasberry Pie Cluster, and pervasive liquid cooling.

Other highlights include:
  • Posit Research was there at the Innovation Showcase with an all-new company working to proliferate Unum based computing invented by John Gustafson from A*STAR in Singapore.
  • New high performance interconnects are proliferating with PCIe technologies, Gen-Z, etc.
  • The Student Cluster LINPACK record was smashed this year with 51.8 Teraflops. Nanyang University achieved this record number with the new NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs.
After that, we do our catch of the week.
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Monday, November 13, 2017

Radio Free HPC Reviews the Latest TOP500 List

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team reviews the latest TOP500 list in front of a live audience in Denver at SC17.

The fiftieth TOP500 list of the fastest supercomputers in the world has China overtaking the US in the total number of ranked systems by a margin of 202 to 144. It is the largest number of supercomputers China has ever claimed on the TOP500 ranking, with the US presence shrinking to its lowest level since the list’s inception 25 years ago.

Just six months ago, the US led with 169 systems, with China coming in at 160. Despite the reversal of fortunes, the 144 systems claimed by the US gives them a solid second place finish, with Japan in third place with 35, followed by Germany with 20, France with 18, and the UK with 15.

China has also overtaken the US in aggregate performance as well. The Asian superpower now claims 35.3 percent of the TOP500 flops, with the US in second place with 29.8 percent.

The top 10 systems remain largely unchanged since the June 2017 list, with a couple of notable exceptions.

Sunway TaihuLight, a system developed by China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC), and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, maintains its number one ranking for the fourth time, with a High Performance Linpack (HPL) mark of 93.01 petaflops.

See our complete coverage of SC17

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Wednesday, November 8, 2017

A Preview of the SC17 Student Cluster Competiton

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team previews the SC17 Student Cluster Competition.

"In this real-time, non-stop, 48-hour challenge, teams of undergraduate and/or high school students assemble a small cluster on the exhibit floor and race to complete a real-world workload across a series of applications and impress HPC industry judges." 

Dan's got the inside scoop on all the new wrinkles of the competition this year, where 16 international student teams will go head-to-head. There's an all high school squad from Indiana, returning champs from China, and an all-new cloud computing component utilizing Cycle Computing on Azure.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Sunday, November 5, 2017

Speeding up Applications with RedLine Performance Solutions

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC teams discusses performance optimization with Carolyn Pasti and Don Avart from Red Line Performance Solutions.
RedLine Performance Solutions is a world-class provider of high-performance computing solutions. Our promise: to ensure objectively engineered top quality solutions at every phase of the HPC life cycle, minimizing labor, time, and costs. Our proprietary RedLine Performance Methodology (RPM) – developed over two decades of working with HPC systems and applications and updated regularly with lessons from each new engagement – delivers unique benefits that consistently maximize customer success.
RedLine is partnering with Radio Free HPC on Project Cyclops, an effort to build the world's fastest single node on the HPCG benchmark. Listen in as Don and Carolyn share their methodology for workload performance optimization and what it takes to make clusters really perform up their potential in the real world.

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