High-Performance Computing News Analysis | insideHPC

At SC17 last week, Nyriad Limited demonstrated their company's first commercial product, Nsulate, a GPU-accelerated storage solution that enables increased storage resilience while reducing the storage power requirements by over 50 percent. "Using a GPU as a storage controller inserts an enormous amount of general purpose processing power directly into the storage pipeline, enabling modern HPC storage appliances to deliver unprecedented speed, scale, security, storage efficiency and intelligence in real-time."The post Video: Nyriad Unveils GPU-accelerated Storage Device for the Square Kilometer Array appeared first on insideHPC.

An new energy-efficient supercomputer called CoolMUC-3 has been deployed at LRZ in Germany. Developed by MEGWARE, the HPC cluster features Intel’s many-core architecture and warm-water cooled Omni-Path switches. "In the long run, we want to get rid of inefficient air-cooling completely."The post Energy-efficient CoolMUC-3 Cluster comes to LRZ in Germany appeared first on insideHPC.

NEC Deutschland GmbH has delivered an LX series supercomputer to Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), one of Germany’s leading research universities and part of the German Gauss Alliance consortium of excellence in high-performance computing. The new HPC cluster ranks 65th in the most current TOP500 list of the fastest supercomputers in the world from November 2017 and 51st in the Green500 list of the most energy-efficient supercomputers.The post NEC Supercomputer at JGU in Germany Ranks #65 on TOP500 appeared first on insideHPC.

Last week at SC17, Data Direct Networks announced that The University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (UTC) has selected DDN’s GS14KX parallel file system appliance with 1.1PB of storage to replace its aging big data storage system and to support a diversifying range of data-intensive research projects. The Center of Excellence in Applied Computational Science and Engineering (SimCenter) at UTC needed a big data storage solution that could scale easily to support growing research programs focused on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), machine learning, data analytics, smart cities and molecular biology.The post DDN Powers Big Data and Machine Learning at UTC in Tennessee appeared first on insideHPC.

Last week at SC17, Hyperion Research announced that the UberCloud and the Stanford Living Heart Project have won the Hyperion Award for Innovation Excellence. "The Stanford LHP project is simulating cardiac arrhythmia, which can be an undesirable and potentially lethal side effect of drugs. The electrical activity of the heart turns chaotic, decimating its pumping function, thus diminishing the circulation of blood through the body."The post Hyperion Innovation Excellence Award goes to UberCloud and Stanford Living Heart Project appeared first on insideHPC.

Last week at SC17, Russian HPC vendor RSC Group showcased the next generation of their liquid-cooled RSC Tornado supercomputers based on Intel Xeon Scalable Processors. "RSC is demonstrating a full set of components for modern HPC computing systems of different scale with 100% direct liquid cooling in ‘hot water’ mode, including high-performance RSC Tornado computing nodes based on the top-bin Intel Xeon Platinum and Intel Xeon Gold processors (part of the Intel Xeon Scalable platform), Intel Server Board S2600BP, high-speed NVMe solid state drives in high-dense М.2 format and the latest Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X Series. The RSC Tornado solution is built using 100% direct liquid cooled Intel Omni-Path Edge Switch 100 Series that ensures end-to-end efficiency of the cooling solution with ‘hot water’ and eventually the lowest possible total cost of ownership of the system."The post Russian RSC Group Joins the Intel Select Solutions for HPC Program appeared first on insideHPC.

Last week, the rhetorical one-two punch of the Intel HPC Developer Conference and Supercomputing 2017 offered global HPC aficionados new insights into the direction of advanced HPC technologies, and how those tools will empower the future of discovery and innovation. In case you missed it, here is a breakdown of all the action.The post Intel Xeon Processors and Intel Omni-Path Architecture Offer Breakthroughs for Top500 Systems appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from SC17, Bruce Tulloch from BitScope describes a low-cost Rasberry Pi cluster that LANL can use to simulate large-scale supercomputers. "The BitScope Pi Cluster Modules system creates an affordable, scalable, highly parallel testbed for high-performance-computing system-software developers. The system comprises five rack-mounted BitScope Pi Cluster Modules consisting of 3,000 cores using Raspberry Pi ARM processor boards, fully integrated with network switching infrastructure."The post Video: An Affordable Supercomputing Testbed based on Rasberry Pi appeared first on insideHPC.

The School of Mines in Colorado is seeking a Computational Scientist in our Job of the Week. "The Computational Scientist works as part of the High Performance Computing Group to help Mines researchers by collaborating with other researchers and computational scientists to develop, integrate, port and tune applications to take advantage of the high performance computing capabilities at Mines."The post Job of the Week: Computational Scientist at the School of Mines appeared first on insideHPC.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team describes the highlights of SC17 in Denver. Highlights includes the debut of ARM hardware for HPC, a Rasberry Pie Cluster, and pervasive liquid cooling.The post Radio Free HPC Recaps SC17 in Denver appeared first on insideHPC.

This week at SC17, Dell EMC announced new machine learning and deep learning solutions, continuing the company’s work to bring high performance computing and data analytics capabilities to mainstream enterprises worldwide. "When you think about what this means for industries like financial services or personalized medicine, the possibilities are endless and exciting.”The post Dell EMC Brings Machine Learning to Mainstream Enterprises appeared first on insideHPC.

Today BittWare announced the TeraBox 1432D high density 1U FPGA server at SC17. Based on a Dell PowerEdge C4130, the customized TeraBox 1432D provides an unprecedented thirty-two 100GbE ports directly connected to four large Xilinx or Intel FPGAs on BittWare accelerator cards. This server targets users requiring the highest density of large FPGAs with directly-connected I/O for clustering or networking.The post New TeraBox 1U FPGA Server Doubles Compute and I/O Density appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, Hugo Falter from Par-Tec describes the new 12 Petaflop supercomputer coming to the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany. "Modular supercomputing, an idea conceived by Dr. Lippert almost 20 years ago, was realised by JSC and ParTec in the EU-funded research projects DEEP and DEEP-ER together with many partners from research and industry. Since 2010, our experts have been developing the software, which will in future create the union of several modules into a single system."The post Video: Atos and ParTec to deploy 12 Petaflop Supercomputer at Jülich appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from SC17, Naoki Shibata from Xtreme Design describes the company's innovative solutions for deploying and managing HPC clouds. "XTREME-D is well-known in Japan for architecting technical computing in the cloud. The company develops and sells XTREME DNA, a cloud-based, virtual, supercomputing-on-demand service that provides unattended services ranging from the construction of a high-speed analysis system on the cloud to optimal operation monitoring, and eliminates the systems after use."The post Xtreme Design Showcases Innovative Solutions for Deploying and Managing HPC Clouds appeared first on insideHPC.

This week at SC17, BOXX Technologies debuted the new GX8-M server, featuring dual AMD EPYC 7000-series processors, eight full-size AMD or NVIDIA graphics cards, and other innovative features designed to accelerate high performance computing applications. "BOXX is taking the lead with deep learning solutions like the GX8-M which enables users to boost high performance computing application performance and accelerate their workflows like never before.”The post BOXX rolls out AMD EPYC Deep Learning Server at SC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from LAD'17 in Paris, Adreas Dilger from Intel presents: ZFS Improvements for Lustre. "Lustre is the Parallel file system of choice for High Performance Computing and large file applications. To meet the capacity and throughput requirements of HPC workloads, Lustre has traditionally required adoption of custom proprietary storage products leading to vendor lock-in and reduced innovation. The evolution of software defined high availability platforms like ZFS running on Linux now make it possible to meet the performance requirements of HPC on open industry standard x86 platforms."The post Video: ZFS Improvements for Lustre appeared first on insideHPC.

Today at SC17, Lenovo announced new initiatives designed to empower customers to embrace Artificial Intelligence and make it a true reality for their organizations to achieve augmented intelligence capabilities for increased productivity and transformative results. "Artificial intelligence is already having a profound impact on traditional business strategies and scientific research, and most senior leaders consider it a priority for the year ahead. To truly benefit from the vast amount of data available to organizations today, our customers must embrace AI as the vehicle to help them achieve success in today’s competitive business landscape,” said Kirk Skaugen, president, Lenovo Data Center Group. “With our newly opened, global AI innovation centers and a comprehensive product and service portfolio we are committed to helping bring their AI deployments to life.”The post Lenovo Accelerates AI to Solve Humanity’s Greatest Challenges appeared first on insideHPC.

Intel Select Solutions HPC provide a fast path for purchasing and deploying a cluster for simulation and modeling workloads with a pre-validated selection of components designed to meet the demands of HPC applications and workflows. These systems provide the capabilities and agility needed to support a range of different workloads and reduce or eliminate the need for multiple single-purpose systems. In addition, the performance of key system characteristics are verified for Intel Select Solutions for Simulation and Modeling at both the node and cluster level.The post Intel Select Solutions for HPC Debut at SC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

Technical Report 6 demonstrates the importance of user feedback to the OpenMP specification,” says Bronis R. de Supinski, the Chair of the OpenMP Language Committee. “Users have indicated that several features are vitally important to them, such as multilevel memory support, deep copy, easy access to unified shared memory and a descriptive loop construct. As a result of that feedback, OpenMP 5.0 will include all of these major additions.”The post New Report Offers insight on OpenMP appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Bright Computing announced Bright Cluster Manager for Data Science, an all-in-one product for data scientists. The new product brings together all of the tools needed to build, manage, and operate an enterprise-class data science cluster.The post Bright Computing Offers Fast Onramp to Deep Learning appeared first on insideHPC.

In computer graphics, ray tracing is a rendering technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light as pixels in an image plane and simulating the effects of its encounters with virtual objects. "Experienced computer graphics developers that understand how ray tracing works, in conjunction with a deep knowledge of the Intel Xeon Phi processor hardware have created a set of ray tracing kernels that take advantage of the underlying instruction sets and the available number of computing cores."The post Ray Tracing on Intel Xeon Phi with Embree appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from SC17, Rich Brueckner from insideHPC describes Project Cyclops, a benchmarking quest to build the world’s fastest single node. The single-node Cyclops supercomputer demonstrates the computational power that individual scientists, engineers, artificial intelligence practitioners, and data scientists can deploy in their offices. Cyclops looks to rank well on the HPCG benchmark.The post Video: Project Cyclops comes to SC17 in a Quest to Build the World’s Fastest Node appeared first on insideHPC.

The new Intel Select Solutions for HPC leverage the proven Intel Scalable System Framework delivers balanced HPC through tighter integration of compute, memory/storage, fabric, and software. The Intel SSF specification provides an architectural foundation that enables development and deployment of a wide variety of high-performance, compute- and data-intensive workloads. Its standards-based programmability allows engineers to run diverse workloads on a broadly available, common infrastructure. Intel SSF enables organizations to achieve high performance with flexibility, scalability, balance, and portability."The post Lenovo Steps up with Intel Select Solutions for HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

Are you at SC17 in Denver? Please join a special session for the IEEE Computer Society Technical Consortium on High Performance Computing (TCHPC). The meeting takes place (Wednesday Nov 15, 2017) in room 201-203 at the Denver Convention Center. "The annual TCHPC Birds of a Feather session at SC provides a forum to discuss the consortium and its mission, activities and initiatives with members of the community, as well as to get inputs from the community. It give members of the community a chance to interact with the TCHPC volunteers and representatives from its member technical committees and to explore opportunities to get involved."The post SC17 Preview: BoF Session on IEEE Consortium on HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

At SC17 in Denver, AMD and its ecosystem partners announced at SC17 immediate availability of a suite of new, high performance systems powered by AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Radeon Instinct GPUs to accelerate innovation in supercomputing. "Target workloads for AMD solutions include machine learning, weather modeling, computational fluid dynamics, simulation and crash analysis in aviation and automotive manufacturing, oil and gas exploration, and more."The post AMD Delivers ‘Supercomputing for All’ at SC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Cray announced that Samsung has purchased a Cray CS-Storm accelerated cluster supercomputer. The Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center (SSIC) procured the system for use in its research into Artificial Intelligence and deep learning workloads, including systems for connected cars and autonomous technologies.The post Cray to Power AI Innovation at Samsung appeared first on insideHPC.

Today at SC17, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced new high-density compute and storage solutions that enable enterprises to harness the power of high performance computing and artificial intelligence applications. “Today, HPE is augmenting its proven supercomputing and large commercial HPC and AI capabilities with new high-density compute and storage solutions to accelerate market adoption by enabling organizations of all sizes to address challenges in HPC, big data, object storage and AI with more choice and flexibility.”The post HPE Steps Up with AI Innovation at SC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

"The Bright Computing and SUSE partnership was first announced in 2009, enabling customers to deploy, manage, and monitor SUSE Linux Enterprise Server clusters using the Bright interface. Since then, the companies have collaborated many times to provide cutting edge infrastructure management solutions to significant strategic companies around the world, including Boeing in North America and CSIRO in Australia."The post Bright Computing and SUSE Collaborate at SC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

This week at SC17, One Stop Systems is showcasing all-new "HPC composable infrastructure solutions" designed for data scientists requiring flexible high performance infrastructure across multiple nodes. "By adding NVIDIA GPU and NVMe expansion, customers can add unlimited flexibility to their HPC architecture by decoupling the latest innovations in CPU capabilities, NVIDIA GPU performance, and NVMe storage into a system called “composable HPC infrastructure.”The post One Stop Systems Rolls Out Composable Infrastructure Solutions at SC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

At SC17, Intel is reinforcing its ongoing commitment to HPC and AI technologies. If you want to learn more about Intel’s investment in Artificial Intelligence, and the convergence with HPC, then be sure to catch the future-focused presentation on "Artificial Intelligence and The Virtuous Cycle of Compute" by Pradeep Dubey, Intel Fellow, and Director of Parallel Computing Lab.The post Catch Today’s ‘Artificial Intelligence and The Virtuous Cycle of Compute’ Presentation by Intel appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, Pradeep Dubey from Intel Labs describes his upcoming SC17 Invited Talk on Artificial Intelligence. "Dubey will discuss how the convergence of AI, Big Data, HPC systems, and algorithmic advances are transforming the relationship between computers and humans, disrupting past notions of a partnership where humans made all the “intelligent” decisions."The post SC17 Preview: Artificial Intelligence and The Virtuous Cycle of Compute appeared first on insideHPC.

In this special guest feature, Kim McMahon offers up her annual Top 10 list of things she's looking forward to as SC17 this week. "It’s that time of year we all look forward to! We have been waiting for it all year, preparing, and holding our excitement until it starts! It’s not vacation, it’s not the holidays, it's Supercomputing!"The post Top 10 Things to Look Forward to at SC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Ellexus released versions of its flagship I/O profiling products Breeze, Healthcheck and Mistral, all based on the Arm v8-A architecture. The move comes as part of the company’s strategy to provide cross-platform support that gives engineers a uniform tooling experience across different hardware platforms. "As the high-performance computing industry targets new compute architectures and cloud infrastructures, it’s never been more important to optimise the way programs access large data sets," said Dr Rosemary Francis, CEO of Ellexus, on the decision to release versions based on Arm. "Bad I/O patterns can harm shared storage and will limit application performance, wasting millions in lost engineering time. We are extremely excited to announce the integration of our tools with the Arm tool suite. Together we will be able to help more organizations to get the most out of their compute clusters.”The post Ellexus Releases I/O Profiling Tool Suites Based for Arm Architecture appeared first on insideHPC.

The JURECA supercomputer in Germany just got a major upgrade with help from Dell EMC. "Thanks to the additional 5 petaflops, the Jülich supercomputer now appears as one of the fastest computers in Europe on the TOP500 list of the fastest computers in the world. This is the first time that a supercomputer with an innovative modular architecture has gone into productive operation worldwide."The post Jülich Supercomputer Adds 5 Petaflop Booster Upgrade from Dell EMC appeared first on insideHPC.

We are very excited to present this live keynote presentation on the SKA Telescope Project live from SC17. It all starts here Tuesday, Nov 14 at 8:30am Mountain Time. "Professor Diamond, accompanied by Dr. Rosie Bolton, SKA Regional Centre Project Scientist, will take SC17 attendees around the globe and out into the deepest reaches of the observable universe as they describe the SKA’s international partnership that will map and study the entire sky in greater detail than ever before."The post Video Replay: SC17 Keynote Presentation on the SKA Telescope Project appeared first on insideHPC.

The demand for performant and scalable AI solutions has stimulated a convergence of science, algorithm development, and affordable technologies to create a software ecosystem designed to support the data scientist. "It is very important to understand that time-to-model and the accuracy of the resulting model are really the only performance metrics that matter when training because the goal is to quickly develop a model that represents the training data with high accuracy."The post An Overview of AI in the HPC Landscape appeared first on insideHPC.

We are very pleased to bring you this livestream of the SC17 Plenary session on Smart Cities. It starts right here Nov 13 at 5:30pm Mountain Time. "The Smart Cities initiative looks to improve the quality of life for residents using urban informatics and other technologies to improve the efficiency of services."The post Video: SC17 Plenary on Smart Cities appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from the Intel HPC Developer Conference, Gadi Singer from Intel describes how the company is moving forward with Artificial Intelligence. "We are deeply committed to unlocking the promise of AI: conducting research on neuromorphic computing, exploring new architectures and learning paradigms."The post Intel and the Coming AI Revolution appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from the Intel HPC Developer Conference, Prabhat from NERSC describes how AI applies to science. "Looking ahead, Prabhat sees broad applications for deep learning in scientific research beyond climate science—especially in astronomy, cosmology, neuroscience, material science, and physics."The post Video: Applying AI to Science appeared first on insideHPC.

Today D-Wave Systems announced major upgrades coming to the D-Wave 2000Q quantum computer in the first quarter of 2018. Two of the most powerful new capabilities are reverse annealing and virtual graphs. These features enable significant performance improvements over the current D-Wave 2000Q system by giving users increased control of the quantum processing unit (QPU). "The new capabilities will greatly benefit our customers by giving them new ways to exploit the power of the D-Wave 2000Q quantum computer,” said Jeremy Hilton, SVP Systems, D-Wave. “We continue to deliver rapid advances in quantum hardware, software, and other system components that our growing user base can leverage for application development.”The post D-Wave Announces Upgrades to D-Wave 2000Q Quantum Computer appeared first on insideHPC.

CoolIT Systems is showcasing their innovative liquid cooling solutions at SC17 in Denver this week. "As the most popular integration partner for OEM server manufacturers, CoolIT will showcase liquid-enabled servers from Intel, Dell EMC, HPE, and Huawei. Combined with the broadest range of heat exchangers and supporting liquid infrastructure, CoolIT and their OEM partners are delivering the most complete and robust liquid cooling solutions to the HPC market."The post CoolIT Systems Showcases Liquid Cooling Innovations at SC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

We are excited to bring our readers this special livestream from NVIDIA at SC17 in Denver. Tune in right here for a live presentation from NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang entitled, "Accelerated Computing: The Path Forward." It all starts at Monday at 3:00pm Mountain time.The post SC17 Livestream: Jensen Huang from NVIDIA on the AI Revolution in HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team reviews the latest TOP500 list in front of a live audience in Denver at SC17. "The fiftieth TOP500 list of the fastest supercomputers in the world has China overtaking the US in the total number of ranked systems by a margin of 202 to 144. It is the largest number of supercomputers China has ever claimed on the TOP500 ranking, with the US presence shrinking to its lowest level since the list’s inception 25 years ago."The post Live! Radio Free HPC does the Latest TOP500 List appeared first on insideHPC.

"With the integration of Arm processors into our flagship Cray XC50 systems, we will offer our customers the world’s most flexible supercomputers,” said Fred Kohout, Cray’s senior vice president of products and chief marketing officer. “Adding Arm processors complements our system’s ability to support a variety of host processors, and gives customers a unique, leadership-class supercomputer for compute, simulation, big data analytics, and deep learning. Our software engineers built the industry’s best Arm toolset to maximize customer value from the system, which is representative of the R&D work we do every day to build on our leadership position in supercomputing.”The post Cray Helps Propels ARM processors into HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

SC17 exhibitors are invited to participate in two “blow the doors off the network” events next week to demonstrate the power of SCinet, the high-capacity network built to support the revolutionary applications and experiments that are a hallmark of the SC conference. "Exhibitors with 100 GB connections to their booths are invited to blast peak traffic to and from the exhibit hall floor to illustrate the power of SCinet connectivity within the Colorado Convention Center and to other sites around the world. The events are scheduled 10-11 a.m. Monday, Nov. 13, and 12-1 p.m. Thursday Nov. 16."The post SCinet to “Blow the Doors off the Network” at SC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

“The Ethernet Alliance SC17 demo shows the next Ethernet era is here, bringing with it technologies supporting today’s supercomputing needs, and laying out a roadmap for not just tomorrow, but tomorrow’s tomorrow.”The post Ethernet Alliance SC17 Demo Highlights Rich Solutions Portfolio For HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Moonshot Research and Providentia Worldwide announced an agreement to jointly offer business and technical services and consulting in the areas of high-performance computing and big data services. The Moonshot/Providentia team brings expertise in driving ROI in enterprise computing by focusing on best practices in HPC, cloud and enterprise IT. "I am absolutely delighted to work with the world’s experts in using HPC to achieve real-time analytics. Speed has become the ultimate competitive advantage in the world of technology-enabled products and services," said Merle Giles, CEO of Moonshot Research.The post Moonshot Research Teams with Providentia Worldwide for HPC and Big Data Services for Industry appeared first on insideHPC.

SC17 will continue its HPC Matters Plenary session series this year with a talk on The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, which is currently #1 on the TOP500. "This talk will first introduce and discuss design philosophy about the approach to integrate these 10 million cores at both the processor and the system level. Based on such a system design, we will then talk about the efforts and the challenges as we see in the process of utilizing the 10 million cores to push forward the frontiers of science in domains such as climate, seismology, material, bioinformatics, and big data analytics."The post SC17 Preview: Lessons on Utilizing 10 Million Cores of Sunway TaihuLight appeared first on insideHPC.

In this time-lapse video from SC17, a team of volunteers build the high-speed SCinet network for the conference in 30 seconds flat. "Check out this behind-the-scenes look at the well-orchestrated frenzy that is SCinet staging week. Jim Stewart, JP Velders and Lance Hutchinson explain how more than 100 volunteers dedicated a week to staging the SCinet NOC prior to its installation on the exhibit floor at the Colorado Convention Center."The post Time-Lapse Video: Building SCinet at SC17 in 30 seconds appeared first on insideHPC.

SC17 will continue its HPC Matters Plenary session series this year a talk on Molecular Simulation at the Mesoscale. "We are developing new capabilities for multi-scale dynamic simulations that cross spatial scales from the molecular (angstrom) to cellular ultrastructure (near micron), and temporal scales from the picoseconds of macromolecular dynamics to the physiologically important time scales of organelles and cells (milliseconds to seconds)."The post SC17 Preview: Molecular Simulation at the Mesoscale appeared first on insideHPC.