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Quick Question
Field Research: Il Calcolo Tecnico-Scientifico in Italia
When I saw the front-page article on HPCwire dealing with "cultural analytics" and a debate that originated in the Renaissance, I knew I had to learn more. Being a dedicated analyst, I flew immediately to Italy to check it out. Or maybe I was already in Italy on vacation and decided to check out the HPC scene while I was here.
Whether through dogged tenacity or pure serendipity, here I am in Rome, reading about cultural analytics in between visits to the Colosseum and the Vatican Museum. And my family is sick of me talking about potential HPC applications.
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HPC: The Software Industry Gulag ... or More Pointedly, Where is SAP for the Rest of Us?
If one were to categorize the enterprise software market as mature, robust, innovative -- and definitely 21st century -- as it races headstrong into the cloud -- how would one categorize the HPC software market? Not to throw stones, but you could easily put it in the circa 1980 timeframe and use terms like immature, cottage-like and definitely lacking investment. When you mention HPC to any of the venture guys, they run for the hills.
I can rewind 20+ years to when I first entered this market and the conversation has not changed. No software, no money for software, and a continuous "humm" over the impracticalities of building software for an ever increasingly complex set of platforms. The dialogue never seems to evolve beyond parallel programming, languages (Fortran and C -- of course), open source and the vertical application specialists who seem to own the scarcest commodity.
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InterSect360TM Market Advisory Service
Supercomputing at the Edge: Non-Traditional High Productivity Computing Segment Definitions
Tabor Research believes that new technologies, methodologies, and applications are emerging outside of the traditional HPC markets that have the essential characteristics of high productivity computing. These requirements include: leading edge capabilities, incorporating, testing, and perfecting of new technologies and methodologies, and market creation and expansion. This HPC market segment is generating a "new edge" by leveraging major technological advances to enable application growth in non-traditional markets. This new area, which we cleverly call Edge HPC (or eHPC), leverages the experience and technologies of the traditional HPC market, while introducing new areas for innovation. Most importantly we believe that eHPC is at the cusp of significant market generation and growth.
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Anticipating the Fall: Application Performance Has Chased Multicore's Speed Right Over a Cliff
Wile E. Coyote is doomed. Hanging in space, he is about to fall, and everyone knows it but him. We all saw it coming. Poor Coyote.
Yet strangely, he doesn't fall right away. According to the alternate-reality rules of cartoon physics, the Coyote must first look down and realize he is standing in thin air. He then has time to gather his thoughts, issue a final desperate wave, and then finally -- poof! -- he plummets body first, leaving his head in the frame for the viewers to witness a comical last-second grimace before that too disappears.
Know what else we saw coming? The crash in HPC application performance that is being brought about by the transition to multicore processors. We've been watching the race, as applications (Codus productivus) desperately chased processors (Waferii siliconium) up the performance mountain. Suddenly multicore came and -- meep! meep! -- the CPUs put on a burst of speed and zoomed around a bend, leaving application software headed for a cliff. HPC users were doomed. Everyone knew it. Poor users.
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What Makes a Supercomputer Super?
The announcement of each new TOP500 list and especially those with systems that break the triple order of magnitude barrier in flops tend to get me thinking about the meaning of the term "supercomputer." This term has been with us at least since the 1970s (if you know of any earlier use, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you.) Although it has had its ups and downs over the years, the term has shown amazing ability to capture the imagination. Yet "supercomputer" has also persistently defied precise definition (much to the mortification of the author).
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Featured User Site:
Simpson Strong-Tie
Simpson Strong-Tie (http://www.strongtie.com/),
a leading designer and manufacturer of construction products for fifty years, is a
relatively new user of High Productivity Computing (HPC) products. Though new,
Simpson has managed to leverage its small HPC cluster in ways that have allowed the
company to reduce its products' time to market and increase its product diversity.
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