HPC Predictions for 2016

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team makes their HPC predictions for 2016.

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Speeding Up Your Network with a New Router

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at why it pays to upgrade your home networking gear.

• Henry doubled his download performance to over 80 Mbps just by upgrading his router. His shopping tip is to buy the device with the fastest processor.
• Dan continues to get lousy performance and even though his devices are just a few years old. Dan recommends the SmallNetBuilder site for howto articles and shopping recommendations.
• Rich is pretty happy with the stock router from CenturyLink and has put the Amazon Echo onto his Christmas list.

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Radio Free HPC Highlights from SC15 in Austin

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team shares their thoughts from SC15 in Austin.

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Fearing for the Future of HPC

In this Halloween podcast, the Radio Free HPC team shares their biggest fears for HPC.

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Dell to Acquire EMC

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks Dell's pending acquisition of EMC.

Dell Inc. and EMC Corporation have signed a definitive agreement under which Dell, together with its owners, Michael S. Dell, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Dell, MSD Partners and Silver Lake, the global leader in technology investing, will acquire EMC Corporation, while maintaining VMware as a publicly-traded company.

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The New Grand Challenges of NSCI

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the new round of Grand Challenges targeted by the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI). The conversation was sparked by an Scientific Computing editorial by IBM's Dave Turek.

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Trip Report from Fall 2015 HPC Conferences

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team goes over a Trip Report from Rich Brueckner, who's been on the road for the past month at a series of HPC conferences.

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Preview of SC15 Tutorials

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team previews three of the excellent Tutorial sessions coming up at SC15.

The SC15 conference takes place Nov. 15-20 in Austin, Texas.

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A Look at 3D XPoint Memory from Intel and Micron

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the newly announced 3D XPoint technology from Intel and Micron.

Following more than a decade of research and development, 3D XPoint technology was built from the ground up to address the need for non-volatile, high-performance, high-endurance and high-capacity storage and memory at an affordable cost.

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Wrapping up ISC 2015

In this episode, Dan Olds and Rich Brueckner from Radio Free HPC discuss the latest news in High Performance Computing from the ISC 2015 conference in Frankfurt, Germany.

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Using Titan to Compute Global Flood Maps

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at how the KatRisk startup is using GPUs on the Titan supercomputer to calculate global flood maps.

Previewing ISC 2015

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team previews the ISC 2015 conference, which takes place July 12-16 in Frankfurt, Germany.

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Government Employee Data was Hacked

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the recent hack of U.S. government employee data. Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee.

Henry says there's a lesson here for us all. It's time start implementing Security-Enhanced SELinux.

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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Preview: ISC 2015 Student Cluster Competition

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team looks ahead to the ISC 2015 Student Cluster Competition. This year, 11 teams from around the globe will face off to build the fastest HPC cluster.

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Reflections on Lustre and LUG2015

In this episode, Rich reports back from the LUG 2015 Lustre User Group Meeting. With something like 188 attendees this year, LUG reflects a user community that has come together to foster the world's fastest parallel file system.

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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Argonne to Install 180 Petaflop Aurora Supercomputer in 2018

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the Aurora supercomputer coming to Argonne in 2018.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced a $200 million supercomputing investment coming to Argonne National Laboratory. As the third of three Coral supercomputer procurements, the deal will comprise an 8.5 Petaflop “Theta” system based on Knights Landing in 2016 and a much larger 180 Petaflop “Aurora” supercomputer in 2018. Intel will be the prime contractor on the deal, with sub-contractor Cray building the actual supercomputers.

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When Google Stops Announcing Algorithm Changes

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team looks at reports that Google will no longer announce when it does updates to its search algorithms.

Google’s investment in artificial intelligence does more than just create better search results; it allows Google’s engineers to make constant algorithm changes right under our noses.

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Market Trends Toward Chipmaker Consolidation

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team looks at some interesting industry developments from the past week.

• Diablo Technologies resumes shipping Memory Channel Storage after a court ruling in their patent dispute with Netlist. Did the patent dispute kill their chances for success int he market? With continuing appeals in progress, Diablo is not out of the woods yet.
• Lenovo opens an HPC Center in Stuttgart. The company is investing in HPC and Dan thinks they could be the market leader in short order. They also have plans for SuperMUC Phase 2, a water-cooled system that was once the fastest supercomputer in Europe.
• Intel's potential acquisition of FPGA maker Altera. With companies like Microsoft making noise about FPGA power efficiency in their Azure cloud, this deal could give Intel an edge in hybrid datacenter technology. In related news, Samsung is reportedly looking at buying AMD and Micron has gobbled up Convey Computer.

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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GTC 2105 Wrapup Show

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team wraps up the GPU Technology Conference. The theme of the show this year was Deep Learning, a topic that is heating up the market for GPUs with challenges like image recognition and self-driving cars.

As a sister conference, the OpenPOWER Summit this week in San Jose showcased the first OpenPower hardware, including a prototype HPC server from IBM that will pave the way to the two IBM/Nvidia/Mellanox Coral supercomputers expected in 2017.

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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Big Data Analytics go Major League

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team takes a look at Big Data Analytics in sports. According to recent reports, at least one team in Major League Baseball is using a Cray Urika system in a bid to gain competitive advantage.

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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Polarizing Net Neutrality

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team splits on the topic of Net Neutrality. The FCC will soon publish its new rules for ensuring an even playing field for Internet Bandwidth.

Dan doesn't like the idea one bit. Henry disagrees and thinks we need Net Neutrality to keep the Comcasts of the world from running amok. As for Rich, he just finds the whole argument rather amusing since it's pretty much a done deal.

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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Lenovo Superfish Scandal

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the recent Lenovo laptop scandal involving Superfish malware. The company intentionally installed the program, which replaces security certificates so that the company could serve up ads on encrypted web pages.

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Archive Debacle at WGBH in Boston

In this episode, Radio Free HPC looks an archival horror story from WGBH in Boston. As the PBS affiliate attempted to move its archived video footage to the American Project, the organization was horrified to discover that many of their files on LTO4 tapes were unreadable.

Does your archive strategy match up with today's storage economics? Henry contends that this is really worth a look as the notion that "write once to tape and forget" is a recipe for disaster. In an era where this WGBH archive could easily fit on 38 hard drives, does migration to tape still make sense?

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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Sorting through the HPC News Grab Bag

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team digs into the Grab Bag for Topics of the Week"

• Dan attended the Lenovo Analyst Conference, and they have him convinced that the company is Going Big on HPC.
• Rich notes that D-Wave Systems has just landed an additional $29 Million in financing. Is Quantum Computing ready for Prime Time?
• Henry is looking forward to seeing what the President's science priorities are going to be when his budget comes out this week. 

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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Cloud Harmony Rates Provider Service Uptime

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Cloud Harmony, an online service that measures and compares cloud provider uptime.

We simplify the comparison of cloud services by providing reliable and objective performance analysis, reports, commentary, metrics and tools.

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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RF-HPC74: Modding the Student Cluster Competition

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team discusses how they’d change the current Student Cluster Competitions in order to make them a more comprehensive test for aspiring HPC professionals.

Henry wants to codify rules that span all competitions in order to provide a level playing field and to satisfy his authoritarian nature. Dan isn’t so sure that would work, given that each of the sponsoring organizations have their own ideas about how to best run a competition. However, both of them believe that the competitions need to become more real world when it comes to systems, applications, and how they’re used. One of the first steps along this road, the guys agree, is to add a storage component to the competitions.

Since Rich isn’t around for this show, the boys take the opportunity to make fun of his Apple addiction and how Rich is probably all worried about bending his phone on his European jaunt.

Got Something to Say? Here is our new Voicemail Box: (503) 852-1843. Send us your questions, comments, and ideas and we’ll put you on the show.

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Network Security and the Big Data Breaches of 2014

In this episode the Radio Free HPC Team looks at Network Security in light of the recent series of breaches at places like Sony, Home Depot, and Target

Our special guest this week is Security Expert Linda Millis, who has a day job as Senior VP of Sol-Pass.

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Poking Fun at the Turing Test

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the Turing Test for artificial intelligence. Does the Turing Test need to be retired as discussed on insideHPC? The discussion quickly degrades into what may be our funniest show ever!

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