A Preview of the SC18 Student Cluster Competition

In this podcast, Radio Free HPC Previews the SC18 Student Cluster Competition.

The Student Cluster Competition was developed in 2007 to provide an immersive high performance computing experience to undergraduate and high school students. With sponsorship from hardware and software vendor partners, student teams design and build small clusters, learn designated scientific applications, apply optimization techniques for their chosen architectures, and compete in a non-stop, 48-hour challenge at the SC conference to complete a real-world scientific workload, showing off their HPC knowledge for conference attendees and judges. Teams are composed of six students, at least one advisor, and vendor partners. The advisor provides guidance and recommendations, the vendor provides the resources (hardware and software) and the students provide the skill and enthusiasm. Students work with their advisors to craft a proposal that describes the team, the suggested hardware, and their approach to the competition. The SCC committee reviews each proposal and provides comments for all submissions received before the deadline."

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A Look at IDC's Growing Server Market Numbers

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the latest server market numbers from IDC. The takeaway? The Server industry up 43 percent year over year. Component prices have gone up, so there may be multiple contributing factors implying richer configurations are being deployed. Dan thinks IDC might be adjusting their model, but we can't be sure from here. He doesn't see how a company like Inspur can jack their business by 112 percent in a single year. This is simply unprecedented growth. Welcome to the Server Business in the Age of Cloud.

Rich notes that Intel's terrific earnings recently were a bellwether for this "bullish" server market. As an interesting data point, something like 50 percent of all Intel chips made worldwide today are custom chips going to the hyperscale cloud market. Apparently, the Googles of the World don't want the off-the-shelf parts. And since they buy in such high volume, Intel is reaping big rewards.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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Brent Gorda on his new Role as HPC Lead for ARM

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team catches up with Brent Gorda to discuss the future of ARM in HPC.

Brent Gorda leads the HPC business for Arm. Prior to this recent role, he spent a year consulting (HPC/Quantum/AI) and advising startup CEO's in Silicon Valley. Earlier in his career, he founded Whamcloud, which he sold to Intel and served as the General Manager for Intel’s High Performance Data Division. Brent has also served on many advisory boards (SCxy, Cray Research, Westera) and founded the Student Cluster Competition, a world-wide event affecting the careers of thousands of undergraduates each year.

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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A Look at Remarkable Growth in the HPC Server Market

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at remarkable growth in the HPC Server Market reported by Hyperion Research.

Hyperion Research reports that worldwide factory revenue for the high-performance computing (HPC) technical server market jumped 27.6% to $3.7 billion in the second quarter of 2018 (2Q18), up from $2.9 billion in the same period of 2017, according to the newly released Hyperion Research Worldwide High-Performance Technical Server QView. Sequentially, second-quarter 2018 HPC server revenue grew 16.7% over the $3.2 billion figure in the first quarter of 2018.

Revenue in the first half of calendar year 2018 rose 23.8% over the 2017 first half, from $5.6 billion to $6.9 billion. Hyperion Research forecasts that revenue for HPC server systems will reach about $12.9 billion in full-year 2018 and will grow to $19.6 billion in 2022.

According to Steve Conway, Hyperion Research senior vice president of research, “Revenue in the second quarter also benefited from HPC’s crucial role at the forefront of R&D for emerging, economically important artificial intelligence uses such as self-driving vehicles, precision medicine, smart cities and the Internet of Things.”

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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SC18 Event Preview

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks ahead to preview SC18 in Dallas. The conference takes place Nov. 11 - 16.

SC18 in Dallas is world’s largest gathering of HPC professionals, and the smart money is on the organizations that leverage the show for their own gatherings, meetups, special booth sessions, and user groups. Here is a roundup of special events not to miss.

Ancillary Events at SC18:

• HP-CAST is the HPE Enterprise user group meeting that kicks things off in Dallas on Nov. 9-10, prior to SC18.
• Intel HPC Forum at the Omni in Dallas on Nov. 11. The event is free of charge and features a keynote by Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee.
• Dell EMC HPC Community Meeting goes from 8:00 am - 2:00 pm at the Fairmont Dallas on Nov. 12.
• DDN User Group Meeting at the Old Red Museum of Dallas County History & Culture from 1:00 pm - 6:00pm on Nov. 12.
• Hyperion Research Breakfast Briefing at SC18 takes place at the Adolphus Hotel at 7:15 am - 9:00 am on Tuesday, Nov. 13. Breakfast will be served at 6:45 am.
• Univa will host a Lunch & Learn session from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm on Nov. 14 at the Westin in Dallas.
• Mellanox SC18 Evening Event on Wednesday, Nov. 14. Entertainment will be provided SUPER mentalist in the world Lior Suchard in his amazing show followed by a gala dinner.

Does your company have special events planned for SC18? Let us know at news @ insidehpc.com and we will add it to this post.

See our complete coverage of SC18

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Radio Free HPC Looks at the Frightening Notpetya Cyber Attack

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at one of the most massive hacks ever, the Notpetya cyber attack on shipping company Maersk and their partners.

This story, featured in Wired magazine, should send chills down the spines of anyone out there who isn’t religiously updating their machines. In other news, Dan is in Australia for the week at the HPC-AI Advisory Council annual Perth meeting, in his catch of the week, he discusses how one of the companies at the conference has made extensive use of IBM’s Watson and is seeing great benefits. Shahin brings up a new camera with almost unimaginable image specs, while Henry get his two cents in on everything else.”

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A Look at the new Eagle Supercomputer at NREL

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the new Eagle supercomputing under construction at NREL.

The new machine from HPE will run more detailed models that simulate complex processes, systems, and phenomena to advance early research and development on energy technologies across fields including vehicle, wind power, and data sciences.

We are strongly committed to architecting technologies to power the next wave of supercomputing and are creating advanced HPC systems while scaling energy efficiency in data centers, to get us there,” said Bill Mannel, vice president and general manager, HPC and AI Group, HPE. “Through Eagle and our overall ongoing collaboration with the U.S. DOE and NREL, we are advancing research to bolster innovation in energy and sustainability.”

After that, we do our Catch of the Week.

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