Inside HPC & AI News | High-Performance Computing & Artificial Intelligence

The DOE High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) Initiative plans to issue its first joint solicitation in November for manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) and materials (HPC4Mtls) research. "The programs are intended to spur the use of national lab supercomputing resources and expertise to advance innovation in energy-efficient manufacturing and in new materials that enable advanced energy technologies. Selected industry partners will be granted access to HPC facilities and experts at the national laboratories. Projects will be awarded up to $300,000 to support compute cycles and work performed by the national lab partners."The post DOE Call for Proposals: HPC for Manufacturing and Materials appeared first on insideHPC.

Naoki Shibata from XTREME-D writes that choosing the right type of cloud computing is key to increasing efficiency. "One challenge that HPC, DA, and DL end users face is to keep focused on their science and engineering and not get bogged down with system administration and platform details when ensuring that they have the clusters they need for their work. It has often been said that if scalable cluster computing can become more turnkey and user-friendly (and less costly), then the market will expand to many new areas."The post Choosing the Right Type of Cloud for HPC Lets Scientists Focus on Science appeared first on insideHPC.

In this slidecast, Gilad Shainer from Mellanox describes how the company's interconnect solutions power HPC and Ai workloads. "Mellanox is leading industry innovation by providing the highest throughput and lowest latency HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions available today, with a clear roadmap for tomorrow. Please visit Mellanox Technologies in booth #3207 to see the latest in our industry-leading HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand and Spectrum Ethernet solutions, and see how Mellanox is already paving the way to Exascale."The post Interconnect Your Future: Paving the Road to Exascale appeared first on insideHPC.

The Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) is sponsoring the “deFAUlt” team from FAU at the Student Cluster Competition at SC18 in Dallas. "For the past two years, FAU teams were able to come out of these competitions winning the coveted high-performance LINPACK Benchmark challenge."The post GCS Sponsors Team deFAUlt at SC18 Student Cluster Competition appeared first on insideHPC.

Today DDN announced record performance results across the entire spectrum of the SPEC SFS 2014 benchmark suite. The SPEC SFS 2014 benchmarks provide a standardized approach to comparing performance for file server throughput and response time across different vendor platforms. “Building a system that delivers efficiency to our customers for all GPU workloads while simultaneously adding the ability to scale indefinitely is key to supporting rapidly expanding markets such as AI and deep learning.”The post DDN Benchmarks Record SPEC SFS 2014 Performance appeared first on insideHPC.

On September 28, 2018, the Council of Ministers officially backed the European Commission's plans to invest jointly with the Member States in building a world-class European supercomputing infrastructure. "We need supercomputers to process it, develop artificial intelligence and find solutions to complex questions in areas like health and security. Today, most of our researchers and companies need to go outside of Europe to find the first-class computers they need. The EU cannot afford to lag behind. With EuroHPC, we will be able to benefit from innovation at home."The post European Commission Lays out $1 Billion Roadmap for HPC Expansion appeared first on insideHPC.

The European PRACE initiative has just become one of the first WHPC affiliates as part of Women in HPC's ever-growing pilot expansion program. “We anticipate that the new WHPC affiliates will provide amplification of the WHPC mission to diversify the International HPC community, encourage the gathering of statistics of where women are in the community, what roles they fill and also helping us to identify why women leave and what we can do about it.”The post PRACE Joins Women in HPC Affiliates Program appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Altair and Oracle announced a joint HPC Cloud solution that leverages GPU technology for exceptional CFD simulation performance. Now part of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the technology effectively accelerates external aerodynamics and other complex flow simulations at scale and at reasonable cost. "The integration with Oracle’s cloud platform addresses this challenge, and provides customers the ability to use GPU-based solvers in the cloud for accelerated performance without the need to purchase expensive hardware."The post Video: Powered by GPUs, Altair and Oracle Accelerate CFD in the Cloud appeared first on insideHPC.

Dutch cleantech company Asperitas and French IT specialists 2CRSI have announced a partnership on Immersed Computing during the GITEX international technology week in Dubai. "With the combination of 2CRSI and Asperitas’ Immersed Computing, we will be able to deliver sustainable integrated high performance solutions for our customers at a whole new level.”The post Asperitas and 2CRSI Announce Immersed Computing Partnership appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the HPC-AI Advisory Council announced their Call for Sponsors and Session Proposals for the annual Stanford Conference. The event takes place February 14-15, 2019. "Breakthrough discoveries, research, new technologies and innovation all rely on each other,” said Gilad Shainer, HPC-AI Advisory Council chairman. “AI and HPC domains are dominating continuous change and the Stanford Conference is one of few forums where attendees can rise above the din of hype and learn about all of the above, all in one place and openly share best practices that are key to furthering their efforts.”The post Call for Participation: Stanford HPC Conference in February appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Red Hat announced it is collaborating with NVIDIA to bring a new wave of open innovation around emerging workloads like artificial intelligence, deep learning and data science to enterprise datacenters around the world. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s enablement of NVIDIA GPUs on our Sierra supercomputer provides commonality across our systems, greatly facilitating our users’ ability to exploit the world's third fastest computer," said Bronis Supinski, CTO of Livermore Computing.The post Red Hat Powers NVIDIA DGX-1 for Ai Workloads appeared first on insideHPC.

In this special guest feature, James Reinders describes why roofline estimation is a great tool for code optimization in HPC. "As a long-time teacher of optimization techniques, I can confidently say that Roofline analysis is a must-have for anyone optimizing for performance. This has not always been the case. As I will explain, today it is an important technique to draw upon when doing performance optimization."The post Optimizing HPC Code with Roofline Analysis appeared first on insideHPC.

Fans of open source Machine Learning got a boost today with the launch of an Exascale Visual AI initiative to sequence Visual DNA from images using Volume Learning to enable new applications. “A global backbone of supercomputers will learn, record and serve visual DNA to innumerable connected applications, providing basic visual AI services for industrial inspection, inventory, commerce and daily life. Volume learning and visual DNA will become ubiquitous, popular, simple and free.”The post OpenVDNA Project Learns Visual DNA appeared first on insideHPC.

Our friends at Univa are offering free exhibit passes for SC18. "Univa will be exhibiting at SC18 in Dallas between November 12 and 15, 2018 (booth #2226). We invite you to meet our representatives at The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center for the year's key global conference and exhibition for high performance computing, networking and storage."The post Univa Offering Free Exhibit Passes for SC18 appeared first on insideHPC.

"The innovative and versatile nature of ESnet's OSCARS enabled us to design a unique 5000-mile 100 Gbps loop, which our ESnet colleagues quickly helped establish in 2015," said Zettar Founder and CEO Chin Fang. "We were thus able to have the data storage clusters and the data transfer nodes co-located in the same rack although they were at both ends of the loop. Physically they were separated by inches, but digitally they are separated by 5000miles. Further the clusters themselves have a self-imposed cap of 80 Gbps."The post SLAC Researchers use ESnet for Record Speed Transfer of 1 Petabyte of Data appeared first on insideHPC.

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."The post Podcast: Countdown to SC18 with Radio Free HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has posted their Agenda for HP-CAST once again this year at SC18. The event takes place Nov. 9-10 in Dallas. " HP-CAST meetings typically include corporate briefings and presentations by HPE executives, technical staff, and HPE partners (under NDA), and discussions of customer issues related to high-performance computing."The post Agenda Posted for HP-CAST at SC18 in Dallas appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, supercomputing power and algorithms help astrophysicists untangle giant stars’ brightness, temperature, and chemical variations. “As a star becomes redder (and cooler), it becomes more variable. That’s a pretty firm prediction from what we’ve found, and that’s going to be what’s exciting to test in detail.”The post Video: Supercomputing the Secrets of Giant Stars appeared first on insideHPC.

Today GRC announced that the company has been awarded the Corporate LiveWire 2018/2019 Innovation in Liquid Cooling Award. The award recognizes GRC’s patented ICEraQ and ICEtank cooling solutions for its effectiveness solving the problem of increasing heat loads in data centers and as a technology-based product aimed toward providing a brighter future. "Since the company’s founding in 2009, it has deployed systems in 13 countries, across industries that include academic supercomputing, oil and gas, military, financial services, and cryptocurrency mining."The post GRC Receives Innovation in Liquid Cooling Award appeared first on insideHPC.

LBNL is seeking a Software Developer for the FATES Project in our Job of the Week. "The engineer will work with the FATES model, which is a size and age structured dynamic vegetation model that represents plant physiology and ecosystem assembly processes for use within Earth system models. This position will be principally funded by the NGEE-Tropics project, which is a long-term, DOE-supported effort to bring together observational and theoretical approaches to build, inform, and test the representation of tropical forests within Earth system models."The post Job of the Week: Software Developer for the FATES Project at LBNL appeared first on insideHPC.

The SCinet team is already at work building the world’s fastest temporary network for SC18. The event takes place Nov. 11-16 in Dallas. "How often does an international conference leave its mark on a host city in the form of improved infrastructure? That is exactly what is taking place in Dallas, Texas, as volunteers prepare to build SCinet, the SC conference's dedicated high-capacity network. SCinet takes one year to plan and culminates in a weeks-long, high-intensity installation process."The post Video: Building SCinet for SC18 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Penguin Computing announced the formation of the Penguin Computing Artificial Intelligence Practice, a full service consultancy dedicated to working with organizations to achieve their AI goals. "The new AI Practice will be led by Penguin Computing Chief Technology Officer Philip Pokorny and will operate as a full-service consultancy, delivering system design expertise, building custom technology solutions, and providing professional services (including management and hosting of AI clusters) and advanced level support."The post Penguin Computing Launches Ai Practice appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, scientists describe how the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will measure the effect of dark energy on the expansion of the universe. It will obtain optical spectra for tens of millions of galaxies and quasars, constructing a 3D map spanning the nearby universe to 11 billion light years. "How do you create the largest 3D map of the universe? It’s as easy as teaching 5,000 robots how to “dance.” DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, is an experiment that will target millions of distant galaxies by automatically swiveling fiber-optic positioners (the robots) to point at them and gather their light."The post Watch 5,000 Robots Merge to Map the Universe in 3-D appeared first on insideHPC.

Today ISC 2019 announced that submissions are now open for Research Papers, Research Posters, Project Posters, BoFs, PhD Forum, Tutorials and Workshops. "We encourage engineers, scientists, young researchers, students and active members of the global HPC community to participate in next year’s conference. Submissions are welcome in the following sessions: Research Papers, Research Posters, Project Posters, BoFs, PhD Forum, Tutorials and Workshops. Please note that some of the sessions provide travel assistance, awards and the opportunity to publish the presented research in reputable international journals."The post Call for Participation: ISC 2019 in Frankfurt appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, the DOE SciDAC-funded BISICLES experiment investigates the millennial-scale vulnerability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) due solely to the loss of its ice shelves. Starting at the present-day, the AIS evolves for 1000 years, exposing the floating ice shelves to an extreme thinning rate, which results in their complete collapse. The visualizations show the first 500 years of the simulation -- after that point, the ice sheet continues to evolve and retreat, but less dramatically.The post Video: Antarctic Ice Sheet Simulations appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from GTC Israel, Bill Dally from NVIDIA gives a keynote talk on accelerated computing for Machine Learning and HPC. "GTC is the largest and most important event of the year for GPU developers. GTC and the global GTC event series offer valuable training and a showcase of the most vital work in the computing industry today - including artificial intelligence and deep learning, virtual reality, and self-driving cars."The post Video: Bill Dally Keynote on Accelerated Machine Learning from GTC Israel appeared first on insideHPC.

This sponsored post from HPE delves into how tools like HPE Data Management Framework are working to make HPC storage "bigger on the inside" and streamline data workflows. "DMF seamlessly moves data between tiers, whether they’re “hot” tiers based on flash storage, “warm” tiers based on hard drives or “cold tiers based on tape."The post Making Storage Bigger on the Inside appeared first on insideHPC.

Today IBM introduced AI OpenScale, a new technology platform that addresses key challenges of Artificial Intelligence adoption, such as concerns over how AI applications make decisions, the global shortage of AI skills, and the complexities of working with disparate AI tools from multiple vendors.To accelerate AI adoption, businesses need one place to run all their AI,” said David Kenny, SVP of IBM Cognitive Solutions. “We are committed to enabling our clients to use the AI of their choice, regardless of vendor – and use IBM AI OpenScale to make it transparent and easy to manage. Only through enabling businesses to trust and scale their AI will we enable the AI economy.”The post IBM Unveils AI OpenScale to Accelerate Ai Adoption appeared first on insideHPC.

For the third year in a row, the American Haas F1 Team will use the computational capacity of a Cray Cray CS500 cluster supercomputer powered by AMD EPYC 7000 processors to handle its large CFD simulations for the 2019 season. "The double precision computing power of our new system will help solve our most demanding CFD and data challenges.”The post Cray Powers Haas Formula 1 Team appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Altair announced the acquisition of SIMSOLID, a company focused on full-fidelity CAD assemblies to provide fast, accurate, and robust structural simulation without requiring geometry simplification, cleanup, or meshing. "We believe SIMSOLID is a revolutionary technological breakthrough which will have a profound impact for product design,” said James Scapa, Altair’s Founder, Chairman, and CEO, “It’s incredibly fast, accurate, and robust and we believe a game changer for our industry.”The post Video: Altair Acquires SIMSOLID for Faster Product Simulation appeared first on insideHPC.

IBM’s Multicloud Manager provides an operations console for companies as they increasingly incorporate public and private cloud capabilities with existing on-premises business systems. "With its open source approach to managing data and apps across multiple clouds, the IBM Multicloud Manager will position companies to scale their many cloud investments and unleash the full business value of the cloud,” said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, IBM Hybrid Cloud."The post IBM Multicloud Manager to Create Harmonized Systems appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the University of Michigan announced their new $4.8 million Great Lakes computing cluster. A Dell EMC system, the new supercomputer will serve researchers across campus. "Great Lakes will also be the first cluster in the world to use the Mellanox HDR 200 gigabit per second InfiniBand networking solution, enabling faster data transfer speeds and increased application performance."The post Great Lakes Supercomputer from Dell EMC Coming to University of Michigan appeared first on insideHPC.

Today MIT announced a new $1 billion commitment to address the global opportunities and challenges presented by the prevalence of computing and the rise of artificial intelligence. The initiative marks the single largest investment in computing and AI by an American academic institution, and will help position the United States to lead the world in preparing for the rapid evolution of computing and AI. " As we look to the future, we must utilize these important technologies to shape our world for the better and harness their power as a force for social good."The post Video: MIT Makes Billion-Dollar Bet on Ai and Machine Learning appeared first on insideHPC.

After three years of working on key algorithmic challenges in CFD, the European ExaFLOW Project it touting a series of industry milestones. With three flagship runs, ExaFLOW has managed to work on different specific CFD use cases which highlight the importance of their outcomes for both industry and academia. "After three years of working on key algorithmic challenges in CFD, the European ExaFLOW Project it touting a series of industry milestones. With three flagship runs, ExaFLOW has managed to work on different specific CFD use cases which highlight the importance of their outcomes for both industry and academia."The post ExaFLOW Project takes on High-order CFD appeared first on insideHPC.

This guest article from Dr. Bhushan Desam, Lenovo’s Director, Global Artificial Intelligence Business covers how new HPC tools like Lenovo's LiCO (Lenovo Intelligent Computing Orchestration) are working to address the growing popularity of AI in HPC and to simplify the convergence of HPC and AI.The post The Rising AI Tide in HPC – Are You Ready? appeared first on insideHPC.

Elsevier publishers have launched their Call for Papers on their Special Issue on Advances on Parallel and High Performance Computing for AI Applications. "Clusters of computers and accelerators (e.g. GPUs) are routinely used to train and run models, both in research and production. On the other hand, ML and AI have also become a "killer application" for HPC and, consequently, have driven much of research in this area. For example, tailored computer architecture has been devised and new parallel programming frameworks developed to accelerate AI/ML models. The objective of this special issue is to bring together the HPC and AI/ML communities to present their applications and solutions to performance issues, and also to present how AI/ML can be used to solve HPC problems."The post Call for Papers: Special Issue on Advanced Parallel HPC for AI Applications appeared first on insideHPC.

Mark Dawson gave this talk at the Supercomputing Wales Swansea Symposium 2018. "Supercomputing Wales is funded to provide university research teams access to powerful computing facilities to undertake high-profile science and innovation projects within the consortium universities. Software Engineers across Wales to develop algorithms and customized software that harnesses the power of the facilities. The aim of the investment is to capture more external research funding, increase scientific partnerships, create highly-skilled research jobs and support collaborations with industrial and other partners. This will provide a step change in supercomputing-enabled scientific research in Wales."The post Video: Graphical User Interfaces for HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

Today ECMWF launched the ESCAPE-2 project on energy-efficient scalable algorithms for weather and climate prediction at exascale. "It brings together 12 partners, including national meteorological and hydrological services, HPC centers, hardware vendors and universities. The ESCAPE project aims to prepare NWP and climate models for new computing architectures towards exascale computing, with a focus on energy efficiency."The post ESCAPE-2 Project to develop algorithms for weather and climate prediction at exascale appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the Technion technological institute in Israel announced that Intel is collaborating with the institute on its new artificial intelligence (AI) research center. "AI is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and Intel has been working closely with a range of industry leaders to deploy AI capabilities and create new experiences. Our collaboration with Technion not only reinforces Intel Israel’s AI operations, but we are also seeing advancements to the field of AI from the joint research that is under way and in the pipeline.”The post Intel Powers New AI Research Center at Technion in Israel appeared first on insideHPC.

A team of theorists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has solved a long-standing puzzle in the nucleation of a high-pressure phase of ice known as ice VII, which is believed to exist near the core of “ocean world” planets recently detected outside of the solar system, and has recently been discovered to exist within the Earth’s mantle. "By dissecting the thermodynamics and kinetics of interfaces, there are entirely new classes of problems that can be studied and, ultimately, controlled. A holy grail is to design self-regulating dynamic systems and machines that can utilize far-from-equilibrium dissipative dynamics to perform complex tasks, as in biological systems -- control of nucleation is a step on this path.”The post New Paper Looks at Solidification of High-pressure Ice in newly discovered Ocean Worlds appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Australia-based DownUnder GeoSolutions (DUG) announced a move to Skybox Datacenters in Houston for its global expansion of a revolutionary oil and gas exploration technology. "This was an exhaustive world-wide search for a data center location,” said Dr. Matthew Lamont, co-founder of DUG. “Houston was a natural choice given the low cost of power and the fact that Skybox had the available infrastructure ready to go. This facility will allow us to install the fastest supercomputer in the world at this time to meet the ever-increasing demand for energy. We are excited to expand our presence in Houston and expect to be operational by February 2019.”The post DownUnder GeoSolutions Moves to Skybox Datacenters for Oil & Gas Exploration appeared first on insideHPC.

As the trend toward exascale HPC systems continues, the complexities of optimizing parallel applications running on them increase too. Potential performance limitations can occur at the application level which relies on the MPI. While small-scale HPC systems are more forgiving of tiny MPI latencies, large systems running at scale prove much more sensitive. Small inefficiencies can snowball into significant lag.The post Video: The March to Exascale appeared first on insideHPC.

D.E. Shaw Research has multiple positions open for HPC System Administrators in our Job of the Week. "Ideal candidates should have strong fundamental knowledge of Linux concepts such as file systems, networking, and processes in addition to practical experience administering Linux systems. Relevant areas of expertise might include large-installation systems administration experience and strong programming and scripting ability, but specific knowledge of and level of experience in any of these areas is less critical than exceptional intellectual ability."The post Job of the Week: HPC System Administrators at D.E. Shaw Research appeared first on insideHPC.

Kristin Kolodge from J.D. Power and Associates gave this talk at the HPC User Forum in Detroit. "With the rapid emergence of new technology in the automotive industry, understanding driver behavior and preferences within the vehicle is more crucial than ever for automakers. For 50 years, J.D. Power has been providing rich automotive consumer insights. Now, J.D. Power will work with HARMAN to go beyond measuring consumer insights to help automakers around the world better measure and understand how their evolving products are satisfying customer needs."The post Video: Bridging the Automated Vehicle Gap: Consumer Trust, Technology and Liability appeared first on insideHPC.

Sharan Kalwani writes that that supercomputers a critical tool for predicting severe weather that could threaten entire regions with famine. "Models have been improved - although at too slow a pace for the general public at large – that now this HPC approach is taking root in more than just the monsoon predictions. Tropical storms are also important and cyclones are also quite rampant. Recently two Petaflop-capable machines have been installed in a special tropical weather department in the central part of the country."The post Supercomputing to Feed the World appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the HPC-AI Advisory Council Call for Team Entries for the 2019 Student Cluster Competition in Frankfurt. To be held at ISC 2019, the competition seeks student teams currently enrolled in four-year higher education and undergraduate-degree programs. “Students come away from competitions steeped in experience gained from deploying tools and technologies they’ve developed to launch, troubleshoot and run live applications, to solve complex problems and achieve very real-world results.”The post Enter Your Team Now in the ISC 2019 Student Cluster Competition appeared first on insideHPC.

Are you coming to SC18 in Dallas next month? Now is your last chance to enjoy Early-Bird registration discount rates. "Are you an ACM, IEEE, or SIGHPC member? If not, it is something that you should consider. With a membership in any of these societies you will receive a substantial discount on your SC conference registration. For example, members can save up to $400 over non-members by registering on or before October 14, 2018 for the Technical Program."The post Hurry! Register Now for SC18 to Enjoy Early-Bird Rates appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Atos announced a joint effort with E4, the Jülich Supecomputing Centre, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Huawei, Mellanox, and SUSE to help shorten time-to-market for HPC and Edge deployments. "Collaborative and grassroots initiatives focused on solving real world problems are the hallmark of a vibrant ecosystem," said Jean-Marc Denis, Head of Strategy, BigData and Security at Atos. "Addressing the challenge of supporting one trillion connected devices requires today’s infrastructure to evolve. Only the Arm ecosystem has the flexibility, scalability, and technical breadth to bring best-in-class solutions to market in areas as diverse as edge and high-performance compute.”The post Atos Launches Open Edge and HPC Initiative for the coming 5G World appeared first on insideHPC.

Today ARM server vendor Ampere introduced a new developer platform and program to facilitate the open development of next-generation cloud applications. Available through Lenovo, the new server platform with Ampere’s eMAG processors is available now for purchase and developers can order by visiting Ampere’s new developer web site. "By providing access to a development environment with open standards and full open documentation, we can expand the ecosystem and optimize the developer experience to innovate on cloud applications not yet imagined.”The post Ampere Augments ARM Servers with New Developer Platform appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Oracle announced support for the NVIDIA HGX-2 platform on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Designed to meet the needs of the next generation of analytics, machine learning, and AI, Oracle is offering GPU-accelerated deep learning and HPC containers from the NVIDIA GPU Cloud container registry. “Whether you are an engineer, data scientist, researcher or developer, we are bringing the power of compute and cloud to your fingertips.The post NVIDIA HGX-2 Ai Supercomputer Comes to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure appeared first on insideHPC.