Dan Olds is the owner and founder of Gabriel Consulting Group, a technology analysis and consulting firm, based in Beaverton, Oregon.
He pays particularly close attention to how technology continues to fundamentally transform both business and science.
Big Blue bigwig: Tiny processor knobs can't shrink forever
HPC blog You cannae break the laws of physics - and 7nm is the limit
While at IBM’s Smarter Computing Summit last week, I had the great pleasure of hearing Big Blue's Bernie Meyerson talk about limits to today’s tech, and the associated implications.
Bernie is IBM’s VP of Innovation and one of the rare technologist-scientist types who can clearly and directly explain highly technical concepts in …
Why gov labs presenting HPC tech ≠ officials wolfing overpriced sushi
HPC blog US gov travel caps: Agency bods may have to skip supercomputing shows
Our buddy Rich Brueckner over at insideHPC broke some news this week when he published a story about new conference and travel spending restrictions that might radically scale back US government agency participation in HPC industry events like the upcoming SC12 conference in Salt Lake City this November.
The new strictures are …
Software disaster zone Knight Capital bags $400m lifeline
What really happened when computers at trading firm went nuts
I recently wrote about how a bad round of software testing lost Wall Street trading firm Knight Capital an estimated $440m – enough to almost put the company out of business.
I speculated that Knight could be bailed out if it's allowed to unwind its computer system's unexpected burst of loss-making trades on the stock market - …
How one bad algorithm cost traders $440m
A look at the worst software testing day ever
Knight Capital, a firm that specialises in executing trades for retail brokers, took $440m in cash losses Wednesday due to a faulty test of new trading software. This morning reports were calling it a trading “glitch", which isn’t nearly as accurate as the term I’d use: “f**king disaster".
The broad outline of the story is here …
Tsinghua, NUDT flatten rivals in ISC cluster smackdown
ISC 2012 Teraflop barrier busted across the board
The 2012 ISC Student Cluster Challenge ended last week, and it’s high time we take a look at the winners, the awards and some of the results.
Each of the five teams put in months of work designing its cluster and learning how to optimise it to run the various benchmarks and application codes featured in the competition. They …
HPC whizzkids battle own software on final day of student compo
ISC 2012 Stony Brook Uni team repairs, rewinds and completes
It's the last day of the 2012 ISC Student Cluster Competition, and Stony Brook University (profile here) has had their work cut out for them so far... From the very beginning, they had software problems with their cluster, requiring them to concentrate on troubleshooting and repairing while their competitors were running code. …
ISC 2012: China's 'Pop Idols' seek Klusterkamph glory
ISC 2012 Intra-China winners look for win in Germany
The Tsinghua University team (profile here) didn’t take the easy route to the ISC 2012 Student Cluster Competition in Hamburg. They had to fight their way in a Pop Idols-style smackdown along with five other universities, which all competed to carry the Chinese flag in an intra-country play-in round.
Tsinghua won that …
China's NUDT students hope GPUs will grind down rivals
ISC 2012 GPU-heavy system surprised punters back in Seattle
China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT, profile here) is staying true to its heritage by being the only team to use a hybrid CPU/GPU system at the ISC 2012 Student Cluster Competition in Hamburg.
NUDT, like Team Tsinghua, had to fight its way through five other Chinese university competitors to secure its spot …
ISC cluster kids KIT plan to drive off with vendor swag
ISC 2012 ... and perhaps a trophy too
The home team at the 2012 ISC Student Cluster Challenge, Team KIT (profile here), are a confident bunch. Not quite cocky, but confident. They made it through their first cluster competition with almost-flying colours – they had significant problems on only one of the surprise applications (WRF) on the first day of competition. …
T-shirt race stragglers aim for student cluster compo crown
ISC 2012 Colorado Buffaloes DID breeze through the supercomputing bits
We catch up with the University of Colorado team (profile here) on the last day of the 2012 ISC Student Cluster Competition (aka Hell on the Elbe) in Hamburg.
Even though they were the last team to get started on the challenge (owing to their lackadaisical approach to the opening t-shirt scramble), they feel good about the …
Sequoia: Can anyone learn to wield this mighty HPC weapon?
Podcast Top500 co-founder Dr Jack Dongarra talks to the Reg
Here at ISC 2012 in Hamburg, I sat in on a podcast with Rich Brueckner of insideHPC and Dr Jack Dongarra, co-founder of the Top500 list. We talked about the 20-year evolution of the list and, of course, Sequoia, the BlueGene/Q system that topped the June 2012 rankings.
Dr Dongarra spoke about Sequoia’s very impressive number of …
Team America, take two: Meet Colorado's cluster kids
HPC blog Hardened SC veterans need a dose of good luck
The other US-based team in the 2012 ISC Student Cluster Challenge is the University of Colorado, whose members hail from Boulder. Colorado is by far the most experienced team in the ISC version of this competition, having sent teams to all six SC cluster competitions.
In fact, I recognised several of their current Hamburg team …
What do we know about GPUs? Tianhe-1A lives at our school
HPC blog China's NUDT team brings hybrid power to Hamburg
China’s NUDT (National University of Defense Technology) was the first Chinese team to compete at a Student Cluster Competition, making the trek to SC in Seattle in 2010. They came very close to winning the whole competition, finishing a very close second to Taiwan’s Tsinghua University.
They also survived a gruelling intra- …
Meet China's cluster Pop Idol winners, Team Tsinghua
HPC blog First of two ultra-competitive national teams
China universities have gone student cluster crazy over the past year. When China was allotted two team slots at the ISC 2012 Student Cluster Competition, more than 300 universities expressed interest in participating.
Thirty schools submitted proposals, forcing the country to have a play-in round to select which two teams would …
US veterans Stony Brook face cluster compo crunch
HPC blog Seawolves: Our software just doesn't stack up...
The Stony Brook Seawolves are one of two US teams competing in the ISC 2012 Student Cluster Challenge in Hamburg this week. This isn’t the first time the school has participated in a contest like this, but it’s probably their longest road trip in terms of distance and culture (although NYC to Portland, Oregon is a close second …
Student HPC whizzkids in unusual competition start
HPC blog Brief bit of shirt-lifting before mental engagement
The ISC Student Cluster Challenge kicked off last night in a unique manner. Rather than a simple shouted “Go!” or a loud tone sent over a bullhorn, the organisers confronted the university teams with a physical challenge, along the lines of the old Le Mans auto races.
Each team had to run across the show floor to gather up six …
ISC Klusterkamph: Meet the home squad, Team KIT
We take a peek at German students' packages
Germany's cluster-competition entry, team KIT, is defending their home turf at the ISC 2012 Student Cluster Challenge this week in Hamburg. We spent a few minutes chatting with them as the competition was beginning. They were all smiles, but it was clear that they are serious about winning the competition.
This is the first …
ISC cluster smackdown: Students whip out their tools
HPC blog White Intel bread with GPU sprinkles
The final system configurations for the ISC 2012 Student Cluster Challenge have been locked down and can now be revealed. For the ISC inaugural event, we’re seeing a lot of sameness but a few key differences.
On the "sameness" side, every team is sporting various flavours of Intel Sandy Bridge processors, with speeds ranging …
China aims to redraw the petaflop graph with 100 Pflops in 2015
HPC blog Crouching Tiger, floppy Dragon
China shocked the supercomputing world in late 2010 with a chart-topping 2.56 Petaflop/sec Tianhe-1A. It was a surprising system on several levels: 1) it topped the incumbent number one box (Oak Ridge’s Jaguar) by almost 50%; 2) it was the first (and, so far, only) hybrid commodity combo of Intel Xeon and NVIDIA Tesla processors …
German KIT v Fighting Seawolves in student cluster deathmatch
HPC blog Reg bookie reports from the digital ringside
According to bettors, the upcoming ISC’12 Student Cluster Challenge in Hamburg will come down to a competition between home-country team KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and the New York-based Stony Brook University Fighting Seawolves. (No, I don’t know what a ‘Seawolf’ is either.)
isc12_odds_update
The competition …
Newbie German team 3-to-1 fave in cluster building compo
HPC Blog Just don't mention ze /var
Early money makes Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) a heavy favorite to win both the LINPACK and Overall number-crunching benchmark competitions at next week’s Student Cluster Challenge in Hamburg, Germany.
isc_betting_odds
The high-performance computing competition, also known as “Hell on the Elbe: Student …
Supercomputers need standard shot glass to measure out juice
Webcast Can’t fix it unless you can quantify it
The biggest challenge in getting to the next level of supercomputer performance – Exascale – is the massive amounts of electricity these systems will consume. On a smaller scale, energy consumption also inhibits HPC installations. The problem isn’t just getting enough plugs from your walls to the grid; it’s also the cost of …
Students face off in Hamburg home-cooked cluster clash
HPC blog Hell on the Elbe: You pick the winners at ISC’12
We’re a little less than two weeks away from the tip-off of the first ISC/HPCAC 2012 Student Cluster Competition. University teams representing the US, China, and host nation Germany will meet in an epic benchmark battle to prove which team can design and build the fastest homemade cluster. The only constraint is electricity – …
China sends likely pair to student cluster smackdown
ISC 2012 Meet Tsinghua U and NUDT
China is sending two teams to the ISC Student Cluster Competition (iSCC) this June in Hamburg. Tsinghua University and the National University of Defense Technology were survivors of a rigorous Hunger Games-style play-in competition; they had to beat out four other teams for the coveted Hamburg spots. Chinese server/services …
Americans invade Euro cluster compo
ISC 2012 Buffalo, Bear-O-Dactyl vie for cluster glory
Two American universities vie for cluster fame and glory in the inaugural ISC'12 Student Cluster Competition (iSCC) in Hamburg next month. This competition, sponsored by Airbus, the HPC Advisory Council and ISC, gives university teams the chance to design, build, and benchmark their clusters against four teams of peers. They’re …
Germany's KIT drives hot-shot boffins to Klusterkampf
ISC 2012 Carries hopes of a continent into cluster compo
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany is the lone European entry in the ISC'12 Student Cluster Competition. As such, they’re carrying a huge weight on their solid Teutonic shoulders. KIT, as Team Germany, is charged with defending home-country student clustering honour against powerhouse teams from China …
The stage is set: Prepare for Hamburg cluster carnage
ISC 2012 Sprints, mystery apps and less amps in student contest
Now that China has settled on its two entrants to the ISC’12 Student Cluster Challenge (I’m dubbing it iSCC for short), it’s time to get a feel for the number-cruncher design competition and what the entrants will face.
Airbus is the big-name sponsor of the iSCC this year and has played a vital role in getting this fledgling …
Student cluster warriors to face off on new battlefield: ISC
HPC blog Nearly THIRTY Chinese universities entered heat
I’ve been following the annual SC Student Cluster Competition (SCC) for a few years now. It’s a great programme that pits teams of university undergrads against each other in the quest to design, build, and benchmark their own clustered systems. In the process they learn a lot about HPC, get a lot of exposure to the industry, …
Fusion-io stuffs workstation storage into bulging hand luggage
HPC blog Dual-GPUs, 3GB/sec I/O and fits in overhead bin
Fusion-io nabbed prime real estate on the GTC 2012 exhibit floor – right inside the entryway. They took advantage of it by offering a hosted oxygen bar, complete with an oxygen bartender and a wide selection of coloured/flavoured airs. I got the lowdown on their offerings (it's hospital grade oxygen – something I insist upon) …
Crazy Texans dunk servers in DEEP FRYERS
HPC blog | Vid Will 2012 be the year of immersive mineral oil cooling?
I first met the Green Revolution guys back at SC09 in Portland, Oregon. As I roamed the exhibit hall, people kept telling me to check out “those guys with the deep fryers full of servers”. At last I found them out in the lobby, which is the kids’ table section of the show.
Above is a quick video of their demo that I shot while …
Mega 12ft interactive electro-whiteboard lures GTC12 punters
HPC blog Uses crunchy Nvidia graphics cards
While wandering the exhibit floor at GTC12, my attention was captured by what looked like a massive (12ft x 4ft, 3.66m x 1.22m) electronic whiteboard with fast-moving screens portraying information in lots of different forms. Each window was being created, resized, moved, then closed at high speed without lag or distracting …
Minority Report-style swishery demoed with cheap webcam
HPC blog You'll be sorry if you flip it off, though
New tech at GTC12 lets punters pretend to be Tom Cruise in Minority Report: opening windows, moving them, closing them, and essentially acting like a cool, futuristic cop.
Eyesight Mobile Technologies performed an interesting demonstration on the exhibit floor. In the video, marketing director Liat Rostock shows us how the firm' …
Will Nvidia 'n' pals pwn future gaming?
HPC blog GeForce Grid could disrupt everything
With the introduction of VGX and the announcement of Nvidia's GeForce Grid offering, Nvidia and their partners are taking square aim at one of the biggest market opportunities around: gaming. Video games are big business.
For example, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 totted up more than a billion in sales after only 16 days on the …
NVIDIA VGX VDI: New tech? Or rehashed hash?
HPC blog You comment, we respond
My article about NVIDIA’s new VGX virtualised GPU being a potential holy grail for task- and power-user desktop virtualisation inspired reader comments that are well worth addressing. They also brought out a few details that I didn’t cover in the article. First, let’s address a few of the specific comments.
From reader …
Hybrid computing just like FLESH-EATING bacteria
HPC blog A scholarly comparison
Hybrid computing (using CPUs plus GPUs to accelerate processing speed/throughput) and necrotizing faciitis (a flesh-eating bacterial* infection) have more in common than is typically thought. Both exhibit high growth rates, and both are incredibly difficult to stop once they get started.
This story is perhaps best told via …
Mutant number-crunchers win cluster popularity contest
HPC blog CUDA you dig it? Yes, you can
Hybrid computing has come a very long way in a relatively short period of time. My first exposure to hybrids came at SC08 in the lovely city of Austin, Texas. Earlier that year, the Roadrunner system at Los Alamos National Lab had achieved two milestones: 1) It was the first system to break through the petabyte barrier; and 2) …
Nvidia drops veil on game-changing might of VGX
HPC blog VDI'ing Your BYODs
What’s a “holy crap” moment? For me, it’s when I see or hear (or do) something that has far-reaching and previously unforeseen consequences. I’ve had at least two of these moments (so far) at the GTC 2012 conference. The first was when Jen-Hsun Huang, in his keynote presentation, tossed up a slide about Kepler and this new thing …
Nvidia shows off superjuiced Kepler GPU
HPC blog From workhouse to racehorse
There were quite a few surprises in today’s GTC12 keynote by NVIDIA CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang.
If NVIDIA were just introducing a new and faster rev of its latest GPU processor, one that brings three times the performance without breaking the bank on energy usage, that would be a solid win, and in line with expectations. …
Real-time drone videos get GPU-tastic
HPC blog Swimming in sensors, drowning in data
Here at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC 2012), you see a lot of things that you didn’t think were quite possible yet. Case in point: cleaning up surveillance video.
The standard scene in “24” or any spy thriller is of agents poring over some grainy, choppy, barely-lit video that’s so bad you can’t tell whether it’s four …
GTC 2012: Not your average vendo-loveathon
HPC blog Why I geek out for GTC
One of my very favorite industry events is coming up next week: the NVIDIA-organised GPU Technology Conference, aka GTC 2012. I’ve been in the tech industry for almost 20 years; roughly half that time was spent working for The Man in vendor firms, and the other half at my own boutique industry analyst firm. Not surprisingly, I’ …
Biz prof disses Big Data as a fetish for info hoarders
HPC blog Not a good model for success, says doc
When it comes to Big Data, I’m as geeked out as the next guy – if not a little more so. For the last three years or so, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen (and plenty of people who won’t) that Big Data and enterprise analytics are the "next big thing" both in business and computing. Today, it’s widely accepted that Big …
Behold the TPC-DS, a new weapon in the global Big Data war
Seeking the 'game-proof' benchmark
There isn’t anything inherently evil about industry standard benchmarks, just as there isn’t anything inherently evil about guns. You know the saying: “Guns don’t kill people – people kill people.” (What about bullets? No, they’re not inherently evil either.)
But in the hands of motivated vendors, benchmarks are weapons to be …
CPU and RAM hogs overstaying their welcome? Here's a fix
HPC Blog exLudus's Linux layer takes care of unwanted guests
Multicore processors drive everything these days from the biggest HPC cluster to the lowliest tablet – even smartphones. While parallel programming has come quite a way, there are still many apps that aren’t well-behaved at all.
They’re the worst kind of guests – acting like they own the whole damned house while paying …
MIT boffins play BUILDING-SIZED Tetris
HPC blog Video: Now this is what you call 'scale out'
This is one of those stories that just makes me grin and giggle (not a simpering, girlish giggle, but a strong, manly giggle). In their latest display of technical hackery, MIT students built a Tetris game that uses an entire building as the game board.
Kevin Fogarty has the story with video here, or you can watch it embedded …
Intel to use Cray IP to score boffo DARPA dosh
HPC blog But what’s Cray going to do with the Intel cash?
In a bold and unexpected move, Intel bought out rights to Cray’s networking and interconnect technology a couple of days ago for $140 million in cold, hard cash. Like our pal TPM said in his comprehensive story, it was quite a surprise to HPC industry watchers. I hadn’t heard speculation about Cray looking to sell any assets. In …
United Nations gifts NORTH KOREA with tech worth $50k
HPC blog A glimpse at Kim Jong-un's IT wish list...
The UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is looking to gift the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the bad Korea) with a little over $50k worth of hardware and peripherals, plus some training, with the goal of modernising North Korea’s patent and trademark applications.
Really? That’s what’s highest on North …
That latest student craze sweeping China: Supercomputing wars
HPC blog Dozens of universities battle for cluster contest slot
In a Wall Street Journal article last Friday, a bit of light was shone on China’s entry into the upper echelon of supercomputing nations over the past few years. In 2007 China had only 10 systems on the Top500 list. But like TV’s George Jefferson adding dry cleaning stores, China has been movin’ on up - it now has 74 of the top …
The Facebook job test: Now interviewers want your logins
HPC blog Need work? Better hand over that password
When I wrote this blog about how a recent research study correlated social network behavior with employee success, I speculated that we’d soon see employers trying to circumvent Facebook’s privacy policies in order to get a good look at your Facebook pages.
Well, it turns out that some employers aren’t happy with just seeing the …
Encyclopaedia Britannica - Ah, the memories
HPC blog Leaves gap for man with plastic binder, 'cloudy edition'...
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc has announced that after 250 years, it’s throwing in the towel on print editions and moving to all-digital delivery of alphabetised facts and figures.
Encyclopaedia Britannica was a touchstone of my youth. You couldn’t go to a state fair or school event without seeing someone seated at a table next …
HPC battle royale: Exotic models vs Frankenstein monsters
HPC blog Who will win the exascale supercomputer's heart?
My article comparing supercomputer performance and price/performance to common computers generated quite a few comments. For those who didn’t see the initial story, the Fujitsu K computer is a 10 petaflop monster that’s currently the fastest computer in the world. It’s roughly 4x faster than the second place Tianhe-1A Chinese …
