SC13 Wrapup Show

In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team discusses what was hot and trending at the SC13 conference in Denver. Big Data was everywhere on the exhibit floor, but the coming requirements of Exascale spurred a number of low-power supercomputing demonstrations that look to be the wave of the future.

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Big Data Powers the Sports Prediction Machine

Over at The Register, Dan Olds writes that Big Data is powering amazing fortune-telling capabilities for sports at the Prediction Machine.

My pal Rich Brueckner and I had a chance to interview PredictionMachine.com founder Paul Bessire as part of our Radio Free HPC podcast a few weeks ago. In the program, Paul discusses the genesis of the Predictalator and how he turned his master’s degree in quantitative analysis into a full-time business. Along the way, we talk about what’s involved in analysing sports and how they arrived at their winning formula. It’s interesting listening for anyone who has ever been curious about applying scientific methodology to sports.

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Interconnects, Exascale, and Latency Tolerance

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team what interconnect requirements will be needed for applications outside of the current Exascale mission profile. Henry is concerned that these hyperscale machines are getting so physically large that the latency will be a showstopper for applications that have to wait for data. The speed of light is not going to change, he says, and things like Map Reduce may be latency-tolerant on the search part of it, but it is not latency-tolerant on the ingest-shuffle portion. In all, he says the PCI is not going to get us there.

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Why the Apps Will Drive What an Exascale System Looks Like

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the mission parameters driving Exascale development. Henry is concerned that a system designed for DOE applications will be tailored to that particular mission profile and therefore not be a performing system on NSF applications. Will the TOP 10 Exascale applications all be about High Energy Physics? Will Big Data applications be able to scale on such a machine? Who's driving the bus? Most of all, will Dan ever come to understand the question?

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Wrapping up ISC'13

In this podcast, Rich, Henry, and Dan discuss the recent ISC’13 conference, the Student Cluster Challenge, and South Africa’s surprise win. And while there was a lack of news at the conference this year, the boys are definitely psyched up for SC13 in Denver and Dan's plan to move a small camping trailer into his booth space for the duration of the show.

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Radio Free Looks at the Milky Way Supercomputer

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the Milky Way (Tianhe-2) supercomputer from China that now owns the top slot on the TOP500 list. They kick around the hardware and explore the configuration, but then the conversation shifts to real science and recent news about Blue Waters cracking into the HIV virus. Finally, they discuss the impact of Tianhe-2 on the western HPC world.

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Radio Free HPC Interviews Jack Dongarra on the New TOP500

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses the June 2013 TOP500 list with Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee. How did the Chinese manage to trump the world once again with the #1 supercomputer on the planet? Listen in to find out.

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