RadioFreeHPC

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks back on the highlights of SC18 and the newest TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers. [caption id="attachment_71623" align="alignright" width="300"] Buddy Bland shows off Summit, the world's fastest supercomputer at ORNL.[/caption] The latest TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers is out, a remarkable ranking that shows five Department of Energy supercomputers in the top 10, with the first two captured by Summit at Oak Ridge and Sierra at Livermore. With the number one and number two systems on the planet, the "Rebel Alliance" vendors of IBM, Mellanox, and NVIDIA stand far and tall above the others. Summit widened its lead as the number one system, improving its High Performance Linpack (HPL) performance from 122.3 to 143.5 petaflops since its debut on the previous list in June 2018. Sierra also added to its HPL result from six months ago, going from 71.6 to 94.6 petaflops, enough to bump it from the number three position to number two. Both are IBM-built supercomputers, powered by Power9 CPUs and NVIDIA V100 GPUs. At number five is Piz Daint, a Cray XC50 system installed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Lugano, Switzerland. At 21.2 petaflops, it maintains its standing as the most powerful system in Europe. It is powered by a combinations of Intel Xeon processors and NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs Trinity, a Cray XC40 system operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories improved its performance to 20.2 petaflops, enough to move it up one position to the number six spot. It uses Intel Xeon Phi processors, the only top ten system to do so.See our complete coverage of SC18 Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team sits down with Mark Fernandez from HPE to discuss the Spaceborne Supercomputer that it currently orbiting the planet in the International Space Station. Last week, HPE announced it is opening high-performance computing capabilities to astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) as part of its continued experiments on the Spaceborne Computer project. Spaceborne Computer is the first commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) supercomputer that HPE and NASA launched into space for a one-year experiment to test resiliency and performance, achieving one teraFLOP (a trillion floating point operations per second) and successfully operating on the International Space Station (ISS).  After completing its one-year mission proving it can withstand harsh conditions of space – such as zero gravity, unscheduled power outages, and unpredictable levels of radiation – Spaceborne Computer will now, for the first time ever, open its supercomputing capabilities for use aboard the ISS. These “above-the-cloud” services will allow space explorers and experimenters to run analyses directly in space instead of transmitting data to and from Earth for insight. After that, we do our Catch of the Week. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

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."Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

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. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

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. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

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. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

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 Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

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.”Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

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. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at China's new ARM-based Exascale supercomputer prototype. As reported in China Daily, scientists have put an exascale computing prototype into operation that does not run the x86 instruction set. The Sunway exascale computer prototype was developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC), the team that developed Sunway TaihuLight, crowned the world's fastest computer two years in a row in 2016 and 2017. The Sunway exascale computer prototype is very much like a concept car that can run on road,"said Yang Meihong, director of the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan. "We expect to build the exascale computer in the second half of 2020 or the first half of 2021," said Yang.Another prototype exascale supercomputer Tianhe-3 passed the acceptance tests on July 22. Its final version is expected to come out in 2020. The two prototypes marked a further step towards China's successful development of the next-generation supercomputer. After that, we do our Catch of the Week: Rich points us to the story about Rigetti Computing's pending 128-qubit quantum computer. The company has already built the 128-qubit processing chip, and is working to put all the pieces together to bring more power to researchers and developers. If successful, it could be the world’s most powerful quantum computer and it could have the chance to outpace traditional supercomputers. Meanwhile, you can already access IBMQ, D-Wave, and Chinese quantum machines in the cloud today.Henry notes that one of the scary things to come out of the Black Hat conference is a new kind of microwave weapon for cooking your enemy from communication satellites.Dan is wardriving in North Carolina in the town the Internet forgot.Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team talks to John Bent from the IO500 committee about why he and a team of I/O professionals created the IO500 benchmark suite. The second IO500 list was revealed at ISC 2018 in Frankfurt, Germany. Following the success of the Top500 in collecting and analyzing historical trends in supercomputer technology and evolution, the IO500 was created in 2017 and published its first list at SC17. The need for such an initiative has long been known within High Performance Computing; however, defining appropriate benchmarks had long been challenging. Despite this challenge, the community, after long and spirited discussion, finally reached consensus on a suite of benchmarks and a metric for resolving the scores into a single ranking.After that, we do our Catch of the Week. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at a new whitepaper from Lincoln Labs focused on the performance hits Spectre/Meltdown mitigations. The news is not good for HPC workloads. After that, Shahin point us to the story about how DARPA just allocated $75 Million in awards for thinking-outside-the-box computing innovation. They call it the Electronics Resurgence Initiative and the list of projects funded includes something called Software Defined Hardware. After that, we do the Catch of the Week. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team goes through a fascinating presentation that provides details on China's Three-Pronged Plan for Exascale. China may not be the first to Exascale, but they are building three divergent architectural prototypes that pave the way forward. We've got the details in this not-to-miss podcast.We should probably note that this is our 200th Episode of Radio Free HPC. We would like to thank all 13 of our regular listeners for their continued support! Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team offers up a Trip Report from ISC 2018 in Frankfurt. It was a whirlwind week for news with a new USA machine on the TOP500, but the other big news centered around the convergence of HPC & AI. This common theme was all over the show floor, with use cases on display in dozens of exhibits. Topics include: Mousquetaire-Group Announces European Exascale InitiativeISC 2018 Student Cluster Competition resultsShahin rant: Convergence of hpc and AIDan runs down student cluster resultsSamsung works on 5 nanometer chipsIntel seeks a new CEOTeam America Breaks the HotelDownload the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team reviews the latest TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers. The TOP500 celebrates its 25th anniversary with a major shakeup at the top of the list. For the first time since November 2012, the US claims the most powerful supercomputer in the world, leading a significant turnover in which four of the five top systems were either new or substantially upgraded.Highlights:#1 is Summit, an IBM-built supercomputer now running at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), captured the number one spot with a performance of 122.3 petaflops on High Performance Linpack (HPL), the benchmark used to rank the TOP500 list. Summit has 4,356 nodes, each one equipped with two 22-core Power9 CPUs, and six NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs. The nodes are linked together with a Mellanox dual-rail EDR InfiniBand network. #2 is Sunway TaihuLight, a system developed by China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC) and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, drops to number two after leading the list for the past two years. Its HPL mark of 93 petaflops has remained unchanged since it came online in June 2016. #3 is Sierra, a new system at the DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory took the number three spot, delivering 71.6 petaflops on HPL. Built by IBM, Sierra’s architecture is quite similar to that of Summit, with each of its 4,320 nodes powered by two Power9 CPUs plus four NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs and using the same Mellanox EDR InfiniBand as the system interconnect. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.