Michael Dell: SC08 Keynote

Although I will post a summary, notes and thoughts of this morning's SC08 Keynote, given by Michael Dell( CEO of Dell Computers) here later this afternoon, I thought some of you might want to watch along. The advantage of a high tech conference with speakers with lots of technology resources is that they can set up streaming video when they talk.
if you are interested, you can watch the keynote at http://www.dell.com/sc08. Part of his talk will be a review of HPC technology and developments over the last 40 years, but then he will also be talking about the future vision. Dell's current big push is how to simplify HPC, and they have active outreach for the manufacturing sector(more on that after my interviews later this week).
I am off to coffee up and prepare for the keynote, enjoy!

HPC Brokerage services: one cloud that won't rain on your parade

Bob Graybill has started Nimbus, a company that is designed as a brokerage house for HPC services and cycles. He discusses the company's HPC service offerings and rationale for this new company with HPCWire:

To be a business-to-business brokerage or clearinghouse. The idea is to provide pre-negotiated access to cycles, software and expertise on an on-demand, pay-as-you-go basis. We won't own any equipment or do consulting ourselves. We're simply a clearinghouse that builds a menu of quality services and then brings the buyers and the sellers of those services together. Our targets are periodic and experimental users, initially in the manufacturing sector. These are people who don't want to jump over huge hurdles to get the benefits of modeling and simulation using HPC. We're an aggregator of services. We also help our partners, our service providers, by reaching out to a brand new community on their behalf.

Your SC08 Proxy

Since corporate travel is becoming very tight in the current economic climate, This InTech Blogger will be attending the SC08 Super Computing Conference in Austin as your proxy from Nov 17-21. Check out the program and exhibit listings and comment here if you have specific requests for more information, reports from the field or are just generally curious. Be watching here during the conference for daily blog updates about news, announcements and general de-bunking. If you are also going to be attending the conference, be sure to comment here or else email me directly so that we can be sure to cross paths in person.

HPC in a box

Has your business been avoiding HPC because you lack the expert knowledge to install and maintain clusters? Have you been itching to run simulations and gain some competitive edge, but the world of job schedulers, mpi and other "standard" HPC methods was a new world of pain and confusion? A new solution may be on your horizon. this week Velocity Micro announced a new line of Visual Supercomputer workstations. With the power of a small supercomputer in a single box, preloaded with NVIDIA hardware and software, this is a turnkey solution without clustering, grids or other complex HPC elements. With pricing that looks to range from 1500$ to 6000$ and compute power that ranges up above 3 teraflops, this little boxes will suit many small to mid size business needs without breaking the bank. I am thinking of putting one on my Christmas list, so if you get one and have a review or comments, please speak up here.

Real Life Simulation Pitfalls in the data center

One of the current trends in simulation software is to use CFD fluid dynamics models to model heat dynamics in computer data centers. In the era of pushing for cost savings in every corner, being able to lower the cooling bill for your computer room is an easy sell to management. But be careful that the simulations that you use are based on actual measurements taken by someone crawling around the data center and not just averages built in to the program, or you will likely not be able to deliver on the savings you promised management. Kenneth Bill at Forbes.com reminds us that simulations must be grounded with real life measurements in this good article.

Why do you use parallel programming- or not?

There are lots of reasons people choose to use parallel programming- not all of them wise. This article by Michael Wolfe gives excellent insight into the current status of parallel algorithms and a call for better education of programmers in the field. What criteria do you use when deciding if a problem will benefit from the use of parallel programming? How do you pick the staff who will solve the problems?

Simulation Life Cycle Management

At the heart and soul of this excellent article is the following quote:

"For simulation to be truly effective as an integral part of the product development cycle, the processes, authoring tools, data, and resulting intellectual property associated with simulation must be shared, managed and secured as strategic business assets."

As simulation practices grow, businesses need to put in place methods and tools which will allow them to validate and re-create simulation results. How does your business manage simulation methods and data? What gaps are you struggling to fill? What hurdles are you finding the hardest to overcome?