Diverging Chip Architectures in the Wake of Spectre and Meltdown

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the tradeoff between chip performance and security. In the aftermath of the recently disclosed Spectre and Meltdown exploits, Cryptograpy guru Paul Kocher from Rambus is calling for a divergence in processor architectures:

The direction that we need to go as an industry though is ...We need to stop trying to build one processor architecture that is great for playing video games and doing wire transfers. We need to build architectures where there are cores and software stacks designed for security that can be slower, that can be simpler, and we need separate ones that are optimized for performance."

In this video, Paul Kocher presents: Spectre - Exploiting Speculative Execution. Kocher is the lead author of the paper on the Spectre processor vulnerability.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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A New CEO at HPE

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at HPE's new CEO, Antonio Neri, a longtime HPE executive who previously served as President of the company. As the number 1 server vendor in the HPC space, this change will be one to watch as we transition to the exascale era in the next five years or so.

This transistion comes at an interesting time for HPE, as one of their main competitors, Dell Technologies, is reportedly looking at an IPO or reverse acquisition by VMware.

Closer to home in the HPC space:

• HPE just landed a huge deal at DoD Modernization for four supercomputers totaling 14 Petaflops of performance
• HP-CAST host Frank Baetke has left the company and will continue on as Chair of EOFS.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.
 
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