2018 Technology Predictions from Radio Free HPC

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team reviews 2017 Technology Predictions from OrionX.

While all the numbers are not in yet, here are the OrionX 2017 predictions look to be true:

• Azure will grow faster than AWS. While the big three are all growing, Azure seems to be growing at the fastest rate. Microsoft has also made progress in the HPC Cloud space with Azure, including the acquisition of Cycle Computing.
• More chips than Vegas; riskier too. There are something like 26 AI chips in development, much more than the market can sustain.
• Server revenue growth will be lower than GDP growth. Quarterly numbers suggest this trend is continuing.
• ARM server market share will stay below 3 percent. We saw a lot of ARM hardware at SC17, but it will take a while for sales to make a dent in the server market.

After that, we do our 2018 Predictions:

• Henry predicts:
  
  • Security hacks will get even worse this coming year, with at least five major breaches in 2018.
  • By the end of next year, quantum computing will be on our doorstep with a number of announcements by big vendors and people are going to jump on the bandwagon.
• Rich predicts:
  
  • We will finally see an ARM-based system on the TOP500 in 2018. Henry thinks there will be as many as 10.
  • Project Cyclops will actually have an HPCG benchmark in 2018.
  • Cray Inc will be acquired by Microsoft in late 2018. Dan thinks it could be someone else by the end of the year.
• Shahin predicts:
  
  • 5G networks will be a game-changer in a number of market segments  in 2018.
  • The future is IoT, Blockchain, AI, and quantum, where machines will do the majority of the creating, consuming, and paying. Humans will not even be in the loop.
• Dan predicts:
  
  • More diversity in systems, where the homogeneous datacenter starts to go away with FPGA-accelerated systems purpose-built for specific applications.
  • He also plugs his 12 Days of Christmas Rage video that came out on Christmas Day.

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A Closer Look at the New Power9, Titan V, and Snapdragon 845

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at all new fast devices that came to market this week for HPC.

IBM Power9 Servers are here! Launched this week, the AC922 POWER9 servers will form the basis of the world’s fastest “Coral” supercomputers coming to ORNL and LLNL. Built specifically for compute-intensive AI workloads, the new POWER9 systems are capable of improving the training times of deep learning frameworks by nearly 4x allowing enterprises to build more accurate AI applications, faster.

NVIDIA Titan V brings Volta to the Desktop. Not to be outdone, NVIDIA introduced their new high end TITAN V GPU for desktop PCs. Powered by the Volta architecture, TITAN V excels at computational processing for scientific simulation. Its 21.1 billion transistors deliver 110 teraflops of raw horsepower, 9x that of its predecessor, and extreme energy efficiency.

Snapdragon 845 chip based on the ARM architecture brings AI inference to your smartphone. With A75 CPU cores clocking as high as 2.8 GHz, the new architecture also enables it to maintain the same level of performance with a 30% power reduction.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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A Controversy in the Irish Supercomputing List

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at a controversy stirred up by the recent Irish Supercomputing List.

The 9th Irish Supercomputer List was released this week. For the first time, Ireland has four computers ranked on the Top500 and Ireland is now ranked number one globally in terms of number of TOP500 supercomputers per capita.

Controversy: Since the publication of the List, a third party called the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) has expressed concerns that the press release issued by the Irish Supercomputing List is misleading. You can read their opinion here.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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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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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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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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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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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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Preview of SC17 Ancillary Events

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team previews the ancillary events leading up to SC17, which takes place Nov. 12-17 in Denver.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Is the Cloud Killing Tape?

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team asks the question: Is the Cloud Killing the Tape Market? The issue came up this week that Spectra Logic is laying off 9 percent of its workforce.

"There may be a silver lining for Spectra Logic, with a legacy of tape storage. The technology has had its ups and downs over the years, and things look positive for it once again as cloud providers have adopted it as a cost-effective way to handle the growing amount of data being generated, TechTarget, a marketing firm, reported."

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Announcing Project Cyclops - One Node to Rule them All

In this podcast, Dan Olds from OrionX describes Project Cyclops - a benchmarking quest to build the world's fastest single node.

Codenamed “Cyclops”, the single-node supercomputer demonstrates the computational power that individual scientists, engineers, artificial intelligence practitioners, and data scientists can deploy in their offices. Cyclops has achieved results of (score) for the HPCC benchmark, a mark of (score) for the HPCG benchmark, and a score of (score) for the Graph500 benchmark. These results set new single node high water marks for the (list benchmark we achieved records on).

We’ve done more than 150 podcasts talking about topics in high performance computing,” said Dan Olds, partner at OrionX.net Research. “It was time we actually put something together and take a run at some of these benchmarks.” Rich Brueckner commented, “We couldn’t have done this without our sponsors, who include Intel, Kingston, Seagate, and Ebullient Cooling Solutions. They’ve been incredibly helpful.”

Project Cyclops is building a system based on a chassis provided by Supermicro and is fueled by a pair of Intel Xeon E5 v4 processors, 128 GB of Kingston DDR4 memory, and M2 SSD drives from Seagate. An innovative liquid cooling system from CoolIT Systems will chill the processors and GPU accelerators. RedLine Performance Solutions will provide system testing and will help optimize the system for benchmarking and workload runs.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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A proposal to use Blockchain to combat Fake News

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Henry Newman's recent proposal to use Blockchain as a way to combat Fake News. Henry shares that this rant result from what he saw as an egregious story that was going around that could have been easily quashed.
"What if every audio or video app on your phone, TV news camera or your video camera automatically came set up to create blockchains that included information such as geolocation, date and time? Editing programs would also be required to use blockchain. And what if every frame that was edited had a blockchain describing what changes were made?"

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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SC17 Plenary to Focus on Smart Cities

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Smart Cities. As the featured topic this year at the SC17 Plenary, the Smart Cities initiative looks to improve the quality of life for residents using urban informatics and other technologies to improve the efficiency of services.

With the accelerating volume of data about cities, HPC is helping cities to optimize their services, from making food safety inspections more effective to identifying children most at risk for lead poisoning. HPC is supporting the creation of computational models of urban sectors such as transportation, energy demand, or economics. And increasingly there is opportunity—and need—to develop multi-scale, coupled modeling systems that harness new data sources and measurement techniques and that capture the interdependencies between these sectors to provide a more holistic modeling capability for urban designers, planners, and developers. This plenary panel will discuss emerging needs and opportunities suggesting an increasing role for HPC in cities, with perspectives from city government, planning and design, and embedded urban HPC systems.

The SC17 Plenary on Smart Cities takes place 5:30pm - 6:30pm on Nov. 13 at the Denver convention center.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week
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A Closer Look at the Tianhe-2A Supercomputer

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at China's massive upgrade of the Tianhe-2A supercomputer to 95 Petaflops peak performance.

As detailed in a new 21-page report by Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee, the upgrade should nearly double the performance of the system, which is currently ranked at #2 on TOP500 with 33.86 Petaflops on the Linpack benchmark.

The upgraded system, dubbed Tianhe -2A, should be completed in the coming months.

Details about the system upgrade were presented at the conference opening session. While the current system derives much of its performance from Intel Knights Corner co-processors, the new system swaps these PCI devices out for custom-made 4-way MATRIX-2000 boards, with each chip providing 2.46 Teraflops of peak performance.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week:

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A Look at the New OrionX AI Survey

In this Radio Free HPC podcast, Dan Olds and Shahin Khan from OrionX describe their new AI Survey.

"OrionX Research has completed one the most comprehensive surveys to date of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning. With over 300 respondents in North America, representing 13 industries, our model indicates a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 6%. Covering 144 questions/data points, it provides a comprehensive view of what customers are doing and planning to do with AI/ML/DL."

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A Look at High Performance Interconnects

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Dan's recent talk on High Performance Interconnects.

When it comes to choosing an interconnect for your HPC cluster, what is the best way to go? Is offloading better than onloading? You can find out more by watching Dan's talk from the HPC Advisory Council Australia conference.

The good folks at OrionX.net have posted a number of free papers on this subject as well.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Big News in Quantum Computing

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at some new developments in the Quantum Computing ecosystem:

• Rigetti Computing helps Foster Quantum Machine Learning Startup Ecosystem
• IEEE Approves Standards Project for Quantum Computing Definitions

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Eclipse Simulations

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses the eclipse and how researchers are using supercomputers to simulate the corona of the sun at eclipse time.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Recent Biohacks in the News

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks alarming new hacks of health care data.

• Henry points us to a story about a PET scanner hack that exploited Windows 7. He thinks a better design would be to have the device send data only. Shahin thinks that this kind of problem with I0T will require us to have different approaches for "Big T" things like mainframes and "Little T" things like sensors.
• Rich is intrigued by the recent story that biohackers were able to put malware into synthetic DNA that can infect and take over a gene sequencer device.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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A Look at Floating Point and Posit Computing

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the problems with IEEE Floating Point.

"As described in a recent presentation by John Gustafson, the flaws and idiosyncrasies of floating-point arithmetic "constitute a sizable portion of any curriculum on Numerical Analysis." The whole thing has Dan pretty worked up, so we hope that the news of Posit Computing coming to the new processors from Rex Computing will help. The A*STAR center at the National University of Singapore will be one of the first to test out Rex machines later this month."

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.
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AI Ethics and Self-Driving Cars

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team learns about Henry's first exploit as an Ethical Superhero.

"After witnessing a hit-and-run fender bender, Henry confronted the culprit and ensured that the miscreant left a note on the victim's windshield. And while we applaud Henry for his heroism, we are also very grateful that he was not shot in the process. This tale leads us into a discussion of AI ethics and how we won't have this problem in the coming era of self-driving cars."

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Cray Urika-GX Brings Graph Computing to Alan Turing Institute

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at why the Alan Turing Institute is focusing on Graph Computing with their acquisition of a Cray Urika-GX supercomputer.

"Hosted at the University of Edinburgh in the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC), the Cray Urika-GX system will provide researchers at the Alan Turing Institute with a dedicated analytics hardware platform, enabling the development of advanced applications across a number of scientific fields including engineering and technology, defense and security, smart cities, financial services and life sciences."

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Sizing Up SSDs with Drive Writes Per Day

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at why Drive Writes Per Day are such an important metric for acquiring the right kind of SSD for your particular workload.

Drive writes per day (DWPD) is an endurance rating that manufacturers of NAND flash storage provide their customers. ... DWPD will vary, depending upon whether the storage is intended for consumer or enterprise use. Consumer use solid state drives (SSDs) have a fixed endurance rating and capacity.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week:

• Shahin likes a new BBC documentary on the #1 Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer in China.

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ISC 2017 Student Cluster Competition Results

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks back at the recent ISC 2017 conference and summarizes results from Student Cluster Competition.

Eleven student teams were on the show floor this year, vying against each other for the top honors in the sixth annual ISC Student Cluster Competition. Tsinghua University from China emerged as the Overall Competition Winner, thus marking their third win in the contest. They had the honor of receiving their trophy from Wednesday keynote speaker, Professor Thomas Sterling.

The second place was captured by the South African team hosted by CHPC, and the third place went to Beihang University, also from China. The Fan Favorite Award went to Universitat Politècnica De Catalunya from Barcelona, who garnered over 2,100 ISC 2017 participant votes to win the title for the second year in a row. The High Linpack award went to competitors from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen in Nuremberg.

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The State of Lustre from ISC 2017

In this RichReport podcast from the German Autobahn, Brent Gorda gives us a Lustre update from ISC 2017 in Frankfurt.

On the latest Top500 list, Lustre leads the pack with 9 systems in the Top 10.

https://ia601508.us.archive.org/15/items/radioBrent/radioBrent.mp3

After that, Brent describes his new role at CEO quest, where he will coach startup CEOs across the globe that lead companies involved in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & High-Performance Computing. Gorda brings 30 years of leadership, entrepreneurship, and expertise in technology to his new role.

I am delighted that Brent is joining our CEO Quest team. He’s widely regarded as a world-class authority in the big data space, and he’s a proven entrepreneur and leader,” said Tom Mohr, founder and CEO of CEO Quest. “He has a stellar track record in building great companies that boast impressive cultures and unsurpassed employee loyalty. That’s precisely the experience we look for in a CEO Quest Managing Director.”

Gorda comes to CEO Quest from Intel Corporation, where he was General Manager for the High-Performance Data Division. Intel acquired Whamcloud, the company Gorda founded and led as CEO, in 2012. Previously, he led advanced technology projects at Lawrence Livermore Labs and led the technical computing community in the transition from vector to parallel computing and then again to massively parallel computing. Gorda is a frequent keynote speaker in big data and high-performance computing circles and has been on the leading edge of developments in this space for the last several decades.

“It’s a real privilege to join the CEO Quest family,” said Gorda. “I know first-hand how challenging it is to create and scale technology companies in a startup world. I am passionate about new technology and diverse business models, and look forward to mentoring CEOs on their journey to build successful, forward-leaning businesses. CEO Quest brings to this endeavor a unique, research-based approach to the startup process.”

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Intel Omni-Path Rocks the TOP500

In this podcast from ISC 2017 in Frankfurt, the Radio Free HPC team sits down with Scott Misage from Intel to learn why Intel Omni-Path has gained momentum on the TOP500.
"Intel Omni-Path Architecture delivers the performance for tomorrow’s high performance computing workloads and the ability to scale to tens of thousands of nodes—and eventually more—at a price competitive with today’s fabrics. The Intel OPA 100 Series product line is an end-to-end solution of PCIe* adapters, silicon, switches, cables, and management software. As the successor to Intel® True Scale Fabric, this optimized HPC fabric is built upon a combination of enhanced IP and Intel technology."

The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these updates always coincides with the International Supercomputing Conference in June, and the second is presented at the ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference in November. The project provides a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing and bases rankings on HPL, a portable implementation of the high-performance LINPACK benchmark written in Fortran for distributed-memory computers.

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Running Down the TOP500

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the latest TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers. It's Day 1 here at the ISC 2017 conference, and we'll be keeping you posted on all the news as the show goes June 18-22 in Frankfurt, Germany.

 After that, we do our Catch of the Week:

• Student Cluster Competition Update: The student team from NUDT in China has Visa troubles, so they will not be able to participate this week in Frankfurt. That reduces the field to 11 international teams.
• What's up with the Aurora supercomputer that was supposed to come to Argonne next year? Rich has the scoop.

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The Day-by-Day ISC 2017 Preview Show

In this podcast, Rich gives us a day-by-day preview of the upcoming ISC 2017 conference. The event takes place June 18-22 in Frankfurt, Germany.
"ISC High Performance focuses on HPC technological development and its application in scientific fields, as well as its adoption in commercial environments. In 2017 we offer you 13 fascinating HPC topics grouped under three categories: systems, applications, and emerging topics. All topics will be addressed in different power-packed sessions. The ISC tutorials, workshops and the exhibition will complement these sessions."

Friday, June 16

• HP-CAST is the high performance user group meeting for HPE customers and partners. Over 300 attendees are expected for the two-day meeting, which you can read about here on insideHPC.

Saturday, June 17

• The Student Cluster Competition teams begins their system buildout at the Frankfurt Messe. An exhibitor pass is required for entry to the hall.
• HP-CAST Day 2 has a focus on partner sessions.

Sunday, June 18

• ISC 17 Tutorials all day at the Frankfurt Messe.

Monday, June 19

• TOP500 list is released.
• ISC 2017 Opening Session
  
  • Keynote: Dr. Jennifer Tour Chayes, Distinguished Scientist, Managing Director of Microsoft Research New England and Microsoft Research NYC will present: Network Science: From the Massive Online Networks to Cancer Genomics
• Exhibit Opening 3:00pm - 9:00pm
• Intel Special Session with Raj Hazra, 6:00pm - 6:45pm

Tuesday, June 20

• Exhibits 10-6
• DDN User Group, 12:30pm - 5:00pm at the Movenpick Hotel

Wednesday, June 21

• Exhibits 10-6
• Student Cluster Awards Ceremony

Thursday, June 22

• Workshops all day at the Marriott
• Women in HPC Workshop 9:00am - 1:00pm
• Dell HPC Community meeting, 8:00am - 3:00pm. The Dell EMC HPC Community event will feature keynote presentations by HPC experts and a networking breakfast to discuss best practices in the use of Dell EMC HPC Systems.
• Rich heads out for Motorcycle tour of the Alps

Monday, June 26-28

• PASC17 Conference in Lugano, Switzerland

After that, we do our Catch of the Week:

• Dan interviews Carolyn Posti from Redline on the topic of HPC Benchmarking
• Rich buys an Antminer S7 for mining Bitcoins

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A Quick Tour of the SuperNAP Datacenter in Las Vegas

In this Radio Free HPC podcast, Rich gives us the lowdown on his recent tour of the SuperNAP datacenter in Las Vegas. Run by Switch, the campus has over up to 2.4 million sqft of Tier IV Gold data center space with 315 Megawatts of datacenter capacity.

"Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, Switch is built on the intelligent and sustainable growth of the Internet. Its Founder and CEO, Rob Roy, developed more than 260 patent and patent-pending claims covering data center designs that manifested into their world-renowned data centers and their technology solution ecosystems."

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Henry Goes Wild at Best Buy

In this podcast, Henry goes on a shopping spree at Best Buy. His mom was moving into a new place, so he got her all-new electronics to the tune of $1624. Is Henry a good son or did he go cheap? We'll find out.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week:

Rich notes that recent reports about the Aurora supercomputer were incorrect. Rick Borchelt from DoE: “On the record, Aurora contract is not cancelled."

Shahin has been trying to keep up with the boom in cryptocurrency, which now has a market cap of something like $91 Billion dollars.

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Google's New TPU2 Tensor Processing Unit

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the announcements coming from Google IO conference. Of particular interest was their second-generation TensorFlow Processing Unit (TPU2).

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

New Nvidia Volta GPUs for HPC & AI

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Volta, Nvidia's new GPU architecture that delivers up to 5x the performance of its predecessor.

At the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang introduced a lineup of new Volta-based AI supercomputers including a powerful new version of our DGX-1 deep learning appliance; announced the Isaac robot-training simulator; unveiled the NVIDIA GPU Cloud platform, giving developers access to the latest, optimized deep learning frameworks; and unveiled a partnership with Toyota to help build a new generation of autonomous vehicles.

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Update on the Exascale Computing Project

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at a recent update on the Exascale Computing Project by Paul Messina.

"The Exascale Computing Project (ECP) was established with the goals of maximizing the benefits of HPC for the United States and accelerating the development of a capable exascale computing ecosystem. The ECP is a collaborative effort of two U.S. Department of Energy organizations – the Office of Science (DOE-SC) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)."

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Looking Ahead to the 2017 MSST Mass Storage Conference

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses the upcoming MSST Mass Storage Conference with Program Chair Matthew O'Keefe from Oracle.

"Since the conference was founded by the leading national laboratories, MSST has been a venue for massive-scale storage system designers and implementers, storage architects, researchers, and vendors to share best practices and discuss building and securing the world's largest storage systems for high-performance computing, web-scale systems, and enterprises."

MSST takes place May 15-19 in Santa Clara, California.

Register now

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Quantum Startup Rigetti Computing gets $64M Funding

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the week's top stories:

• Quantum Startup Rigetti Computing Raises $64 Million in Funding.

• Rex Computing has their produced their processing chip and thing works.

• Intel has brought their first Octane branded SSDs to market. Based on the 3D XPoint technology developed with Micron, the devices offer 3X performance of traditional NAND at three times the price (at least initially).

• The GW4 unveiled the ARM-based Isambard supercomputer at the UK Met Office. The announcement was part of the launch of six HPC Centers in the UK.

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Report: USA is Losing HPC Leadership

In this podcast, Radio Free HPC looks at a recent report that the USA needs to take aggresive action to keep up with China in High Performance Computing. Produced by the NSA-DOE Technical Meeting on High Performance Computing, the report states that we need to change course now or the U.S. will lose leadership and not control its own future in HPC.

Download the report on U.S. Leadership in High Performance Computing (PDF)

After that, Dan does our Catch of the Week.

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Storj Takes Blockchain Tech to Cloud Storage

In this podcast, Radio Free HPC looks at a Startup called Storj, which will pay you to use your excess data capacity as cloud-based storage based on Blockchain technology.

"Our mission is to rethink cloud storage, to provide the security, privacy, and transparency it’s missing. That's why we are building an open-source cloud platform, that aim to fundamentally change the way people and devices own data."

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Dan's Daughter Gives us the Scoop from Washington, D.C.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team hosts Dan's daughter Elizabeth. How did Dan get this way? We're on a mission to find out even as Elizabeth complains of the early onset of Curmudgeon's Syndrome. Somehow she has turned out well, though, and has a great gig with an Oil company in Washington, D.C., so we also get her take on what is going on in the Nation's capital.

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A Look at Next Generation Computer Arithmetic

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses a recent presentation by John Gustafson on Next Generation Computer Arithmetic.

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A Look at the VW Dieselgate Scandal

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at recent developments in the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal. According to reports, auto parts supplier Bosch wrote the software for VW that enabled the company's diesel vehicles to cheat on emissions tests. We know because Bosch asked VW for indemnity back in 2006.

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An Interview with Henry's Mom

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team speaks to our special guest for the week: Binnie Coppersmith, also known as Henry's Mom. It's Binnie's 80th birthday, and Dan wants to know once and for all if Henry is an alien, or at least why he is the way he is. After that, we look at the good news that The UberCloud has received $1.7 Million in Pre-A Series funding. It's great news for HPC in the Cloud.

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A Look at Open Source Software for Quantum Computing

In this podcast the Radio Free HPC team looks at D-Wave's new open source QBSOLV software for quantum computing. The software is available on github along with a whitepaper written by Cray Research alums Mike Booth and Steve Reinhardt.

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Looking Forward to New Technologies in 2017

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team shares the things we're looking forward to in 2017.

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