High-Performance Computing News Analysis | insideHPC

In this special guest feature, Glenn Lockwood from NERSC shares his impressions of ISC 2019 from an I/O perspective. "I was fortunate enough to attend the ISC HPC conference this year, and it was a delightful experience from which I learned quite a lot. For the benefit of anyone interested in what they have missed, I took the opportunity on the eleven-hour flight from Frankfurt to compile my notes and thoughts over the week."The post ISC 2019 Recap from Glenn Lockwood appeared first on insideHPC.

"As organizations continue to leverage GPUs for HPC applications and also host AI workloads on existing HPC clusters, a growing trend is to add DGX servers to these clusters alongside traditional CPU-based Linux servers. Because Bright Cluster Manager is platform independent, combining DGX servers with servers from another vendor is easy and seamless, resulting in a single unified cluster that Bright can centrally manage and monitor."The post Realize the Massive Potential of Your AI Infrastructure with Bright Computing and NVIDIA appeared first on insideHPC.

Dr. Stephan Schenk from BASF gave this talk at the DDN User Group. "The talk will give an overview of recent activities in Digitalization of BASF’s Research & Development. It will focus in particular on how Big Data and HPC workflows can be combined and complement each other. Technical aspects as well as applications are discussed."The post Combining Big Data and HPC in a GRIDScalar Environment at BASF appeared first on insideHPC.

Intel is collaborating with Baidu on development of the new Intel Nervana Neural Network Processor for training (NNP-T). The two companies will team up on hardware and software design for the new custom accelerator for "training deep learning models at lightning speed." "Intel and Baidu are focusing their decade-long collaboration on building radical new hardware, co-designed with enabling software, that will evolve with this new reality – something we call ‘AI 2.0." said Naveen Rao, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the AI Products Group.The post Baidu Collaborates on Intel Nervana Neural Network Processor for Training appeared first on insideHPC.

In this special guest feature from Scientific Computing World, Robert Roe writes that FPGAs provide an early insight into possibile architectural specialization options for HPC and machine learning. "Architectural specialization is one option to continue to improve performance beyond the limits imposed by the slow down in Moore’s Law. Using application-specific hardware to accelerate an application or part of one, allows the use of hardware that can be much more efficient, both in terms of power usage and performance."The post FPGAs and the Road to Reprogrammable HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Rigetti Computing announced that the company has been named as one of the World Economic Forum’s “Technology Pioneers”. Rigetti Computing was founded in 2013 by Chad Rigetti, and has made its quantum computers available over the cloud since 2017. "Rigetti and its fellow pioneers are leaders in using novel technologies to transform their industries. We see great potential for these next generation companies to shape solutions to global challenges and improve society for years to come.”The post Rigetti Computing Named Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum appeared first on insideHPC.

"Complementing the SC19 conference theme, “HPC is Now!”, the SC19 Invited Talks program brings together 12 leading researchers whose talks will highlight the translational impact of HPC in all areas of science and society. These talks will explore translational approaches in HPC, present emerging challenges and opportunities, and describe results that would not have been possible otherwise."The post SC19 Announces Lineup of Invited Speakers appeared first on insideHPC.

Crispin Keable from Atos gave this talk at the DDN User Group in Frankfurt. "To provide a user-centric ecosystem, Samsung aims to build an AI platform under a common architecture that will not only scale quickly but also provide the deepest understanding of usage context and behaviors, making AI more relevant and useful. Atos was tasked with developing an AI infrastructure for Samsung UK's AI Center that could be easily scaled in the future."The post Accelerating Time to Results for AI at Samsung UK appeared first on insideHPC.

Today D-Wave Systems announced largest-ever global quantum cloud contract with Sigma-i, a company in Japan formed to optimize the world with quantum computing technologies. Sigma-i will offer quantum consulting services and access to the D-Wave 2000Q family of systems to companies, universities, and research laboratories throughout Japan. “This contract signals the ongoing growth of our cloud business and the increasing interest in quantum computing worldwide.”The post D-Wave Announces Largest-Ever Quantum Cloud-Access Contract appeared first on insideHPC.

"Using HPL-AI, a new approach to benchmarking AI supercomputers, ORNL’s Summit system has achieved unprecedented performance levels of 445 petaflops or nearly half an exaflops. That compares with the system’s official performance of 148 petaflops announced in the new TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers."The post Summit Supercomputer Triples Performance Record on new HPL-AI Benchmark appeared first on insideHPC.

In support of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, researchers are creating 3-D models and using one of NASA’s most powerful supercomputers to produce simulations of hypothetical asteroid impact scenarios. "Asteroid impacts are one of the only natural disasters we can actually predict and then take action to protect people," said Michael Aftosmis, an aerospace engineer who leads the ATAP blast wave and ground damage modeling work at NAS.The post Supercomputing Asteroid Impacts for Planetary Defenses appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2019, Dr. Rodolf Fischer from NEC describes how the company's recent win at DWD demonstrates the power and efficiency of the SX-Aurora supercomputer. "The new HPC system will enable the development of seamless prediction of severe weather events, including thunderstorms or heavy rain. The system combines forecasting based on observations with very demanding numerical weather prediction models in order for a more precise prediction of the development and the tracks of such small-scale weather events up to twelve hours into the future."The post NEC SX-Aurora Vector Supercomputer to Power Weather Forecasting at DWD in Germany appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2019, James Coomer from DDN describes the company's new EXA 5 advanced Lustre solution. "We’ve built EXA5 directly for the new era of HPC and AI in the context of Multicloud. We are introducing an entirely new set of features aimed at today’s most demanding AI and HPC end-to-end requirements, at any scale.” said James Coomer, senior vice president of products, DDN. “EXA5 leads on performance, on-prem and in the cloud, with unmatched capabilities in security, stability, user and data management.”The post Video: DDN Launches EXA 5 at ISC 2019 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Qumulo announced comprehensive software and hardware advancements that will help enterprises to capitalize on dynamic market conditions, including rapidly falling NVMe prices, in order to gain data center efficiencies and benefit from the increased reliability and performance of flash-based platforms. "Qumulo makes it easy for users to incorporate new technology developments both on-prem and in the cloud,” said Molly Presley, director of product marketing. “Our software-defined, hybrid cloud file system allows our users to focus on their data-driven businesses, not on managing their storage.”The post Qumulo Delivers new All-Flash Platforms for Unstructured Data appeared first on insideHPC.

Dan Jacobson from ORNL gave this talk at PASC19. "The new CoMet application consists of implementations of the 2-way and 3-way Proportional Similarity metric and Custom Correlation Coefficient using native or adapted GEMM kernels optimized for GPU architectures, and received the 2018 Gordon Bell Prize. We are using CoMet to investigate the genetic architectures underlying complex traits in applications from bioenergy to human clinical genomics."The post Video: Investigating Epistatic Genetic Architectures in Bioenergy and Human Health appeared first on insideHPC.

Addison Snell from Intersect 360 Research gave this talk at the DDN User Group at ISC 2019. "Addison Snell will give a market overview presentation of developments and predictions for HPC, Hyperscale, and AI. Drawing on the library of Intersect360 Research reports and surveys, views will include a selection of market forecasts and end-user data. Topics will include: HPC market size and shares, Machine learning in HPC environments and Outlook for high-performance storage."The post Video: HPC and AI Market Update from Intersect360 Research appeared first on insideHPC.

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is seeking a Director of Facilities Technologies in our Job of the Week. "In this role, you will be responsible for directing all operations for PSC high-performance computing and storage resources, as well as planning, design, deployment, installation, maintenance and operation of future HPC systems."The post Job of the Week: Director of Facilities Technologies at PSC appeared first on insideHPC.

Today StorONE announced record speeds using Seagate SSD drives and StorONE’s TRU S1 Software Defined Storage solution. In recent performance testing, StorONE combined its software with Seagate’s enterprise-class SSDs in a virtual appliance configuration that reached a breakthrough half a million IOPS with 24 Seagate SSDs and all enterprise-class data protection features running. The high-availability, failure-proof VMware cluster with two nodes achieved this throughput on random reads (4K) and 180,000 IOPS on random writes (4K) with latency of less than 0.2 milliseconds.The post StorONE and Seagate Partner to Maximize SSD Performance Specs appeared first on insideHPC.

At ISC 2019, Dell Technologies announced a series of new solutions, reference designs, customer collaborations, and partnerships designed to advance and simplify the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning (DL) and high performance computing. "We’ve engineered Dell EMC Ready Solutions as tested and validated configurations that help our customers more easily and quickly benefit from HPC and AI technologies to reach their ultimate goals.”The post Dell EMC Powers Innovation with AI and HPC at ISC 2019 appeared first on insideHPC.

The concept of a digital twin—the mirroring of a physical object with a virtual object created by simulation-based engineering—has been around since NASA began using numerical simulation technology and comparing the results to ground-based physical models as it developed and managed early spacecraft. "Today, digital twins are hot—a subject of intense interest and investment. Gartner puts digital twins fourth on its list of the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2019."The post Advancing manufacturing with simulation-based digital twins appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2019, Gilad Shainer from Mellanox describes how HDR InfiniBand technology is proliferating across the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. "HDR 200G InfiniBand made its debut on the list, accelerating four supercomputers worldwide, including the fifth top-ranked supercomputer in the world located at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, which also represents the fastest supercomputer built in 2019."The post Video: Mellanox HDR InfiniBand makes inroads on the TOP500 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Supermicro launched the industry’s first family of server and storage systems that support EDSFF (Enterprise and Datacenter Storage Form Factor) NVMe drives. The latest industry standard NVMe storage is a game changer for the market,” said Jake Roersma, VP of Platform Engineering at Netskope. “A form factor that is optimized for SSD has proven to deliver superior performance while simplifying integration using open standards. Supermicro continues to lead the way by providing the deepest portfolio of NVMe products, best cost, and availability.”The post Supermicro steps up with EDSFF All-Flash NVMe Optimized Storage appeared first on insideHPC.

Whatever the platform, getting the best possible performance out of an application always presents big challenges. This is especially true when developing AI and machine learning applications on CPUs. This sponsored post from Intel explores how to effectively train and execute machine learning and deep learning projects on CPUs.The post Intel Optimized Libraries Accelerate Deep Learning Applications on Intel Platforms appeared first on insideHPC.

In this special guest feature, Dan Olds from OrionX shares first-hand coverage of the Student Cluster Competition at the recent ISC 2019 conference. "I’m constantly amazed by the how many different system configurations we see in Student Cluster Competitions. Given that everyone has to use hardware that’s currently available on the market and they all have to be under the 3,000 watt power cap, you’d think that the systems would gravitate towards a common configuration – but you’d be wrong."The post ISC19 Student Cluster Configurations: Less is More, GPUs Rule appeared first on insideHPC.

Today D-Wave Systems announced the general availability of D-Wave Hybrid, a simple open-source hybrid workflow platform for building and running quantum-classical hybrid applications. "Most quantum computing projects we’ve worked on in the past have relied on a classical hybrid quantum-classical approach. The release of D-Wave Hybrid has allowed us to prototype these hybrid approaches much faster than before, and gives us the algorithmic control required to customize different parts to suit our needs."The post D-Wave Releases of D-Wave Hybrid Workflow Platform to Open Source appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2019, Dan Bounds from AMD describes how the company is powering a new generation of supercomputers with their EPYC processors and Radeon Instinct GPUs. "Large system designers today also need efficient systems with the flexibility and openness to meet the challenge of demanding workloads. AMD is raising the bar on compute densities by enabling optimized server designs with high performance, low latency, and excellent efficiency in an open, flexible environment."The post Video: AMD Powers Next-Gen Supercomputing at ISC 2019 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2019, Hyperion Research hosts their annual HPC Market Update briefing. The company helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. "Our industry experts are the former IDC high performance computing (HPC) analyst team, which remains intact and continues all of its global activities. The group is comprised of the world’s most respected HPC industry analysts who have worked together for more than 25 years."The post Hyperion Research HPC Market Update from ISC 2019 appeared first on insideHPC.

At ISC 2019, Cray announced that CSCS in Switzerland is adding a third Cray CS-Storm supercomputer to support the development of cutting-edge weather service products at MeteoSwiss. "MeteoSwiss found success with its existing Cray supercomputers and selected this new CS-Storm to provide the additional computational power required to process increasing volumes of weather observations and produce higher fidelity forecasts. The CS-Storm system was also selected for its ability to run numerical weather forecasts within a reduced energy footprint (as compared to competing solutions), and for the reliability the platform provides MeteoSwiss when running critical workloads."The post MeteoSwiss to Improve Weather Forecasting with Cray CS-Storm Supercomputer appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2019, Jan Mannik from One Stop Systems describes how the company delivers "AI on the Fly." "The next killer application for High Performance Computing technology with the range and skill set required to deliver effective solutions that not many technology vendors acquire. The demand for these solutions is expanding rapidly with the ever increasing utility of artificial intelligence applications across a wide set of industries."The post One Stop Systems Showcases ‘AI on the Fly’ at ISC 2019 appeared first on insideHPC.

At ISC 2019, Cray announced plans to deliver the worlds first Exabyte HPC storage system. As part of the Frontier CORAL-2 contract DOE and ORNL, the next generation Cray ClusterStor storage file system will be integrated as part of ORNL’s Frontier exascale supercomputer, built on Cray’s Shasta architecture. “By delivering a new hybrid storage solution that is directly connected to the Slingshot network, users will be able to drive data of any size, access pattern or scale to feed their converged modeling, simulation and AI workflows.”The post Cray to Deliver First Exabyte HPC Storage System for Frontier Supercomputer appeared first on insideHPC.

At ISC 2019, Hyperion Research announced the newest recipients of the HPC Innovation Excellence Award at ISC 2019 in Frankfurt. "The program's main goals are to help other users understand the benefits of adopting HPC and justify HPC investments, especially for small and medium-size businesses, to demonstrate the value of HPC to funding bodies, to expand public support for increase HPC investments, and to showcase return on investment and scientific success stories involving HPC."The post Hyperion Research Announces Winners of HPC Innovation Excellence Awards appeared first on insideHPC.

In this special guest feature, Dan Olds from OrionX continues his Epic HPC Road Trip series with a stop at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. "Ken discussed how Sandia is hoping to stimulate more of a system-on-a-chip type of technology where extra CPU real estate might be better utilized for better HPC componentry and customization."The post Epic HPC Road Trip Continues to Sandia National Lab appeared first on insideHPC.

IBM has deployed the world's most powerful commercial supercomputer at Total, a global energy company. Coming in at number 11 on the TOP500, the new IBM POWER9-based supercomputer will help Total more accurately locate new resources and better assess the potential associated revenue opportunities. "Pangea III's additional computing power enhances Total's operational excellence. It enables Total to reduce geological risks in exploration and development, accelerate project maturation and delivery, and increases the value of our assets through optimized field operations, with all this at lower cost."The post IBM Deploys World’s Most Powerful Commercial Supercomputer for Total appeared first on insideHPC.

Today a consortium involving over 40 leading companies and university researchers introduced MLPerf Inference v0.5, the first industry standard machine learning benchmark suite for measuring system performance and power efficiency. "Our goal is to create common and relevant metrics to assess new machine learning software frameworks, hardware accelerators, and cloud and edge computing platforms in real-life situations,” said David Kanter, co-chair of the MLPerf inference working group. “The inference benchmarks will establish a level playing field that even the smallest companies can use to compete.”The post New MLPerf Benchmark Measures Machine Learning Inference Performance appeared first on insideHPC.

If you're looking for the big news, the team from CHPC in South Africa won the ISC 2019 Student Cluster competition this year. In this special guest feature, Dan Olds from OrionX shares first-hand coverage of the competition last week in Frankfurt.The post ISC19 Student Cluster Competition: Apps to Confuse & Confound appeared first on insideHPC.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Quantum Computing and HPC and how the two spaces are evolving and cooperating. Their guest is Mike Booth from Quantum Computing, Inc. "Because QC is an accelerator, it fits nicely with how a lot of HPC is being done today."The post Radio Free HPC Looks at Quantum Computing and High Performance Computing appeared first on insideHPC.

Today DDN announced it has captured the number-one spot in the IO500 10-node benchmark, announced today by the Virtual Institute for IO at ISC in Frankfurt, Germany. In addition to the top spot, DDN ranked in three of the top five system results. DDN was also a part of a notable submission working with Google to introduce the first IO500 submission run in public cloud with EXAScaler. Additionally, DDN was recognized this week as the leading storage supplier to HPC in Intersect360’s HPC User Site Census.The post DDN Leads HPC Storage Market and IO500 List appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Mellanox announced that HDR 200G InfiniBand is powering the next generation of supercomputers world-wide, enabling higher levels of research and scientific discovery. HDR 200G InfiniBand solutions include the ConnectX-6 adapters, Mellanox Quantum switches, LinkX cables and transceivers and software packages. With its highest data throughput, extremely low latency, and smart In-Network Computing acceleration engines, HDR InfiniBand provides world leading performance and scalability for the most demanding compute and data applications.The post Mellanox HDR 200G InfiniBand is powering next-gen supercomputers appeared first on insideHPC.

Thierry Poinsot from Toulouse Fluid Mechanics Institute gave this talk at PASC19. "This talk focuses on aerospace propulsion where optimization often leads to the occurrence of instabilities where combustion couples with acoustics, leading to unacceptable oscillations (the most famous example is the Apollo engine which required 1330 full scale tests to reach acceptable oscillation levels). The talk will show how simulation is used to control these problems, in real gas turbine engines and in rocket engines."The post Video: HPC for Instabilities in Aerospace Propulsion Systems appeared first on insideHPC.

The University of Kansas is seeking a Director of the Center for Research Computing in our Job of the Week. "This position will have oversight responsibility for the strategic planning, development, and delivery of an enterprise research computing services model for KU, meeting research objectives and their ongoing development/evolutional needs. The Director will also lead overall technology architecture discussions; contribute to tactical projects in regards to the high-performance cluster, research storage programs, and technology driven by researchers needs."The post Job of the Week: Director of the Center for Research Computing at the University of Kansas appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Qumulo announced that it has expanded its strategic partnership with HPE to encompass both on-prem and hybrid cloud-based storage solutions. "No matter where an organization is in its journey to the cloud, HPE and Qumulo can help users to manage their file-based applications and workloads seamlessly across both data center and cloud environments,” said Molly Presley, Director of Product Marketing, Qumulo. “With today’s extended partnership, Qumulo’s cloud-native file system offers HPE customers the ability to move their data to the public cloud without the need for modifications or costly re-writes."The post HPE teams with Qumulo for On-Prem and Hybrid Cloud Solutions appeared first on insideHPC.

Scarlet Schwiderski-Grosche from Microsoft gave this talk at PASC19 in Zurich. "At Microsoft Research Cambridge, we are exploring optical technologies across the three primary resources, networking, storage, and compute. In this talk, we will outline the future challenges in the data center and discuss the limitations of current technology. We will take a holistic end-to-end view of the needs of the cloud and present our work on optical networking and storage."The post Optics for the Cloud – A New Approach to Data Centre Technology appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2019 in Frankfurt, Dale Brantley from Panasas describes how the company delivers a frustration-free HPC storage environment. "Panasas delivers HPC data storage solutions that support industry and research innovation around the world. Whether it’s building the next Dreamliner, winning a Formula One race, creating mind-bending visual effects, curing disease, or modeling climate change, the world’s leading companies trust Panasas to support their most innovative HPC projects."The post Video: Panasas Delivers Frustration Free HPC Storage at ISC 2019 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Mellanox announced that the company’s InfiniBand solutions accelerate six of the top ten HPC and AI Supercomputers on the June TOP500 list. The six systems Mellanox accelerates include the top three, and four of the top five: The fastest supercomputer in the world at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, #2 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, #3 at Wuxi Supercomputing Center in China, #5 at Texas Advanced Computing Center, #8 at Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and #10 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "HDR 200G InfiniBand, the fastest and most advanced interconnect technology, makes its debut on the list, accelerating four supercomputers worldwide, including the fifth top-ranked supercomputer in the world located at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, which also represents the fastest supercomputer built in 2019."The post Mellanox Rocks the TOP500 with Ethernet and InfiniBand appeared first on insideHPC.

With the demand for intelligent solutions like autonomous driving, digital assistants, recommender systems, enterprises of every type are demanding AI powered – applications for surveillance, retail, manufacturing, smart cities and homes, office automation, autonomous driving, and more coming every day. Increasingly, AI applications are powered by smart inference-based inputs. This sponsored post from Intel explores how inference engines can be used to power AI apps, audio, video and highlights the capabilities of Intel’s Distribution of OpenVINO (Open Visual Inference and Neural Network Optimization) toolkit.The post Using Inference Engines to Power AI Apps Audio, Video and more appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from PASC 2019, Lois Curfman McInnes from Argonne and Rich Brueckner from insideHPC moderate a panel discussion on the challenges of software development for exascale supercomputers. "Software—the key crosscutting technology by which teams collaborate toward predictive science—is dramatically increasing in complexity due to disruptive architectural changes, multiphysics and multiscale modeling, the coupling of simulations and data analytics, and the demand for greater reproducibility and sustainability."The post Panel Discussion: Exascale and Beyond – Challenges in Productive and Sustainable Software appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Rescale announced that Nissan selected Rescale and AWS to extend its on-premise high performance computing systems to the cloud. "It is exciting to see that our hybrid platform on AWS will help Nissan immediately reduce time to market for their newest innovations, while getting access to unlimited computing resources on demand.”The post Nissan Moves HPC to the Cloud with Rescale appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2019, Brian Caslis from Intel describes how the Intel® Xeon® Platinum 9200 series of processors delivers new levels of HPC application performance. "2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Platinum processors are the foundation for secure, agile, hybrid-cloud data centers. With enhanced hardware-based security and exceptional two, four, and eight+ socket processing performance, these processors are built for mission-critical, real-time analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and multi-cloud workloads."The post Video: Leadership performance on the Intel® Xeon® Platinum 9200 series appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Altair announced a global VAR agreement with NEC Corporation to market and sell industry-leading HPC workload manager and job scheduler Altair PBS Professional. As a result of the agreement, NEC has worldwide rights to bundle the PBS Professional solution with all NEC X86/Linux systems. "By combining Altair’s workload management technology and NEC's hardware solution, we are confident that we can contribute to the realization of customers' research needs quickly, easily and flexibly."The post NEC signs up as Reseller for Altair PBS Professional appeared first on insideHPC.

Today NVIDIA announced CUDA-X HPC, a collection of libraries, tools, compilers and APIs that helps developers solve the world’s most challenging problems. "CUDA-X HPC includes highly tuned kernels essential for high-performance computing. GPU-accelerated libraries for linear algebra, parallel algorithms, signal and image processing lay the foundation for compute-intensive applications in areas such as computational physics, chemistry, molecular dynamics, and seismic exploration."The post CUDA-X HPC: Libraries and Tools for your Next Scientific Breakthrough appeared first on insideHPC.