SC12 Review - Intel Pumps Xeon Phi Coprocessor

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team is still talking about the recently concluded SC12 conference in Salt Lake City. The conversation starts with a short review of Thanksgiving dinner (including disgusting eating noises added in at no additional charge) before moving on to more weighty topics. The topic? Intel's formal introduction of their Xeon Phi coprocessor, including some performance and price information. Rich and Henry think that Intel has a strong hand with Phi, but Dan isn't so sure... Download the MP3 * Download the video * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

Radio Free HPC Looks at the Chink in TOP500 Armor

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team quits griping about the horrible WiFi at SC12 and moves on to a truly big issue: Are LINPACK and HPCC benchmarks useful? Should they be constantly re-evaluated? And shouldn’t you really test machines on the kinds of workloads they’re designed to run?

The catalyst for this discussion is the Blue Waters system, for which no LINPACK numbers have been submitted. Yes, it’s behind schedule, and sure, they’re busy doing the science… but is it also a shot across the bow? Are they rebelling against industry philosophy? If they are, that’s a good thing, according to Henry – because a system is about what you plan to do with it, not how many flops you can get out of it. Rich agrees: if you get a giant LINPACK number on a system that has reliability issues, and you can’t output real science because all your time and money is invested in brute computation, what good is it? And the industry sectors doing meaningful work – where are their systems on the Top500? They’re not playing this game.

Spoiler alert: Henry agrees with Dan on something. Really. It’s at the 10:00 mark, if you’ve got to see it to believe it. We hardly believed it ourselves. Download the MP3 * Download the video * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

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