Radio Free HPC looks at Consolidation in the Supercomputing Industry

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team regroups after SC12 to discuss an industry trend that was in evidence at the show: vendor consolidation.

• Cray just acquired Appro
• Intel acquired Qlogic Truescale InfiniBand, Whamcloud, and Cray interconnect IP
• IBM bought Platform
• Xyratex bought ClusterStor
• Hitachi acquired BlueArc
• NetApp bought Engenio storage
• And so on...

The guys discuss how acquisitions need to be integrated the 'right' way and how it's more than just slapping up new logos on websites and combining slide decks. They also talk about some cautionary tales in the world of tech acquisitions along with some success stories. Dan offers a success story: IBM and Platform. Rich predicts which major vendor will next be swallowed whole; Henry predicts a challenge to Intel's x86 dominance. In "SC After Hours" chatter, Dan describes "My Dinner With Henry" in Salt Lake City, and Rich is accused of being the biggest Apple fanboi in all of HPC and, perhaps, the world. Watch for a special cameo appearance by someone who knows all about buyouts: Larry Ellison. Download the MP3 * Download the video * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

Texas Instruments Builds System on Chip for HPC

In this podcast, Arnon Friedmann from Texas Instruments describes the company's new multicore System-on-Chips (SoCs). Based on its award winning KeyStone architecture, TI's SoCs are designed as accelerate traditional x86 servers as well as enable the building purpose-built, energy efficient devices for specific applications powered by ARM processors and TI DSPs on the same package.

Targeted for applications such as networking, radar, imaging, high performance computing, gaming and media processing, TI's new KeyStone multicore processors offer developers more than twice the capacity & performance at half the power relative to existing solutions.

Read the Full Story * Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * If Dropbox is blocked, Download from Google Drive.

Podcast: Cray to Acquire Appro

Today Cray made a surprise announcement that the company intends to acquire Appro International, a privately-held developer of advanced scalable supercomputing solutions, for approximately $25 million in cash. Currently the #3 provider on the Top100 supercomputer list, Appro builds some of the world's most advanced high performance computing (HPC) cluster systems.

Appro is one of the market leaders in HPC cluster solutions, and this acquisition is another step forward as we continue to transform Cray into a company that provides world-class offerings to customers across all segments of the supercomputing market, including Big Data," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "I look forward to welcoming all our new Cray colleagues in this exciting moment for our company -- positioning us well for accelerated growth into the future."

In this special RichReport Podcast, Pete Ungaro discusses the Appro acquisition on the company's quarterly earnings call. Read the Full Story.

Preview of Beowulf Bash at SC12

In this podcast, Douglas Eadline gives us preview of the Beowulf Bash at SC12 in Salt Lake City. Along the way Lara Kisielewska from Xand Marketing and Jeff Layton from Dell provide the color commentary on past events. The Bash takes place at the Clark Planetarium On Nov. 12 from 9:00pm to 12 Midnight. Bring your SC12 badge to get in. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * If Dropbox is blocked, download from Google Drive.

SC12 Preview Show

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses what they're expecting to see at this week's SC12 conference in Salt Lake City. Get the scoop on what's new, what's old, and what's just plain played out. Download the MP3 * Download the video * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed