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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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