High-Performance Computing News Analysis | insideHPC

Applications are now being accepted for the ISC 2018 Student Cluster Competition. Entering its 33rd year, ISC High Performance offers students a unique opportunity to learn how HPC influences our world and day-to-day learning. "The ISC-HPCAC Student Cluster Competition encourages international teams of university students to showcase their expertise in a friendly yet spirited competition that builds critical skills, professional relationships, competitive spirits, and lifelong friendship."The post Enter Your Team in the ISC 2018 Student Cluster Competition appeared first on insideHPC.

Advanced Clustering Technologies has installed a new supercomputer at the University of Southern Mississippi. Called Magnolia, the system will support research and training in computational and data-enabled science and engineering.The post Magnolia Supercomputer Powers Research at University of Southern Mississippi appeared first on insideHPC.

Today XTREME Design Inc. announced that Dr. David Barkai has joined the company as an adviser. As a Japanese startup offering cloud-based, virtual supercomputing-on-demand, XTREME Design hopes to tap Dr. Barkai's extensive HPC expertise in their efforts to enter US market for Cloud HPC. "XTREME Design IaaS computing services deliver an easy-to-use customer experience through a robust UI/UX and cloud management features."The post David Barkai Joins XTREME Design as the company Looks to Bring Cloud HPC to U.S. appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) announced it has upgraded its current quantum annealing computer to a D-Wave 2000Q system. The computer offers the promise for solving challenging problems in a variety of applications including machine learning, scheduling, diagnostics, medicine and biology among others.The post USRA Upgrades D-Wave Quantum Computer to 2000 Qubits appeared first on insideHPC.

Justin Glen and Daniel Richards from DDN presented this talk at the HPC Advisory Council Australia Conference. "Burst Buffer was originally created to checkpoint-restart applications and has evolved to help accelerate applications & file systems and make HPC clusters more predictable. This presentation explores regional use cases, recommendations on burst buffer sizing and investment and where it is best positioned in a HPC workflow."The post Video: DDN Burst Buffer appeared first on insideHPC.

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP) is working with a number of National Labs on the development of supercomputers with 50x better performance than today's systems. In this special guest feature, ECP describes how Argonne is stepping up to the challenge. "Given the complexity and importance of exascale, it is not anything a single lab can do,” said Argonne's Rick Stevens.The post Argonne Steps up to the Exascale Computing Project appeared first on insideHPC.

Ace Computers and BeeGFS have teamed to deliver a complete parallel file system solving storage access speed issues that slow down even the fastest supercomputers. BeeGFS eliminates the gap between compute speed and the limited speed of storage access for these clusters--stalling on disk access while reading input data or writing the intermediate or final simulation results. "We are building clusters that are more and more powerful," said Ace Computers CEO John Samborski. "So we recognized that storage access speed was becoming an issue. BeeGFS has proven to be an excellent, cost-effective solution for our clients and a valuable addition to our portfolio of partners.”The post Ace Computers Teams with BeeGFS for HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

"As part of its ongoing inclusivity efforts, SC17 will once again offer on-site child care during the conference. Available to registered attendees and exhibitors for a small fee, SC17 day care is available for children between the ages of 6 months through 12 years old are eligible to participate."The post Bringing Your Kids to SC17 in Denver? appeared first on insideHPC.

Researchers at Google and Intel recently collaborated to extract the maximum performance from Intel® Xeon and Intel® Xeon Phi processors running TensorFlow*, a leading deep learning and machine learning framework. This effort resulted in significant performance gains and leads the way for ensuring similar gains from the next generation of products from Intel. Optimizing Deep Neural Network (DNN) models such as TensorFlow presents challenges not unlike those encountered with more traditional High Performance Computing applications for science and industry.The post TensorFlow Deep Learning Optimized for Modern Intel Architectures appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Globus.org announced general availability of Globus for Google Drive, a new capability that lets users seamlessly connect Google Drive with their existing storage ecosystem, enabling a single interface for data transfer, sharing and publication across all storage systems. "Our researchers wanted to use Google Drive for data storage, but found that they had to babysit the data transfers,” said Krishna Muriki, Computer Systems Engineer, HPC Services, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “They were already familiar with using Globus so we thought it would make a good interface for Google Drive; that’s why we partnered with Globus to develop this connector. Now our researchers have a familiar, web-based interface across all their storage resources, including Google Drive, so it is painless to move data where they need it and share results with collaborators. Globus manages all the data movement and authorization, improving security and reliability as well."The post Globus for Google Drive Provides Unified Interface for Collaborative Research appeared first on insideHPC.

In this AI Podcast, Paul Wigley from the Australian National University describes how his team of scientists applied AI to an experiment to create a Bose-Einstein condensate. And in doing so they had a question: if we can use AI as a tool in this experiment, can we use AI as its own novel, scientist, to explore different parts of physics and different parts of science?The post Podcast: Could an AI Win the Nobel Prize? appeared first on insideHPC.

"This talk will focus on the role MVAPICH has played at the Texas Advanced Computing Center over multiple generations of multiple technologies of interconnect, and why it has been critical not only in maximizing interconnect performance, but overall system performance as well. The talk will include examples of how poorly tuned interconnects can mean the difference between success and failure for large systems, and how the MVAPICH software level continues to provide significant performance advantages across a range of applications and interconnects."The post Video: MVAPICH at Petascale on the Stampede System appeared first on insideHPC.

"There were several other ways of doing generative models that had been popular for several years before I had the idea for GANs. And after I'd been working on all those other methods throughout most of my Ph.D., I knew a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of all the other frameworks like Boltzmann machines and sparse coding and all the other approaches that have been really popular for years. I was looking for something that avoid all these disadvantages at the same time."The post Heroes of Deep Learning: Andrew Ng interviews Ian Goodfellow from Google Brain appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University announced it has deployed a Cray CS400 supercomputer. The four-cabinet system will power collaborative applied research with industry partners at the University’s new research facility – the John Mica Engineering and Aerospace Innovation Complex (“MicaPlex”) at Embry-Riddle Research Park.The post Embry-Riddle University Deploys Cray CS Supercomputer for Aerospace appeared first on insideHPC.

The LAD'17 conference has posted their meeting agenda. Also known as the Lustre Administrator and Developer Workshop, the event takes place Oct. 4-5 in Paris. "EOFS and OpenSFS are organizing the seventh european lustre workshop. This will be a great opportunity for Lustre worldwide administrators and developers to gather and exchange their experiences, developments, tools, good practices and more."The post Agenda Posted for LAD’17 in Paris appeared first on insideHPC.

Researchers are tapping Argonne and NCSA supercomputers to tackle the unprecedented amounts of data involved with simulating the Big Bang. "Researchers performed cosmological simulations on the ALCF’s Mira supercomputer, and then sent huge quantities of data to UI’s Blue Waters, which is better suited to perform the required data analysis tasks because of its processing power and memory balance."The post Illinois Supercomputers Tag Team for Big Bang Simulation appeared first on insideHPC.

Today ScaleMP a leading provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, delivering technology for software-defined computing and software-defined memory products, today announced it has completed a $10 million funding round. The investment follows deeper and broader adoption of ScaleMP’s technology by server and storage OEMs. The funds will further accelerate the company’s growth, enhance the company’s products and technology, and expand ScaleMP’s support for its OEM partners.The post ScaleMP Completes $10M Funding Round appeared first on insideHPC.

HPC is becoming a competitive requirement as high performance data analysis (HPDA) joins multi-physics simulation as table stakes for successful innovation across a growing range of industries and research disciplines. Yet complexity remains a very real hurdle for both new and experienced HPC users. Learn how new Intel products, including the Intel HPC Orchestrator, can work to simplify some of the complexities and challenges that can arise in high performance computing environments.The post A Simpler Path to Reliable, Productive HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

AnandTech reports that Intel is discontinuing it's line of Knights Landing PCIe based Co-processors. The move is not a surprise given that the company has been producing bootable Xeon Phi processors since early in 2016. "At least for now, Intel does not want to compete against add-on PCIe compute accelerators with its Xeon Phi products. A big question is whether it actually needs to, given the stand-alone capabilities of Xeon Phi and its performance characteristics."The post Intel Discontinues Xeon Phi 7200-Series Knights Landing Coprocessors appeared first on insideHPC.

Today VMware introduced vSphere Scale-Out Edition for Big Data and HPC Workloads, a new solution in the vSphere product line aimed at Big Data and HPC workloads. VMware vSphere Scale-Out edition includes the features and functions most useful to Big Data and HPC workloads such as those provided by the core vSphere hypervisor and the vSphere Distributed Switch. "This new solution also enables the ability to rapidly change and provision compute nodes. The solution will be offered at an attractive price point, optimized for Big Data and HPC environments."The post VMware Rolls Out vSphere Scale-Out Edition for Big Data and HPC Workloads appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, Tuomas Sandholm from Strategic Machine, Inc. and Eng Lim Goh from HPE discuss how High Performance Computing is fast-becoming an integral part of our lives. "Our HPC solutions empower innovation at any scale, building on our purpose-built HPC systems and technologies solutions, applications and support services. The results? More power to differentiate your business, drive research and find answers like never before."The post Interview: How HPE is Democratizing High Performance Computing appeared first on insideHPC.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at some new developments in the Quantum Computing ecosystem. Last week, IEEE approved a new Standards Project for Quantum Computing Definitions. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley Startup Rigetti Computing has teamed up the CDL incubator to boost the Quantum Machine Learning Startup ecosystem.The post Radio Free HPC Catches up with Quantum Computing News appeared first on insideHPC.

Yale University is seeking a Sr. Linux System Administrator in our Job of the Week. "In this role, you will work as a Linux senior administrator in ITS Systems Administration. Provide leadership in Linux server administration, for mission-critical services in a dynamic, 24/7 production data center environment."The post Job of the Week: Senior Linux System Administrator at Yale appeared first on insideHPC.

The Advances in Machine Learning to Improve Scientific Discovery at Exascale and Beyond (ASCEND) project aims to use deep learning to assist researchers in making sense of massive datasets produced at the world's most sophisticated scientific facilities. Deep learning is an area of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks to enable self-learning devices and platforms. The team, led by ORNL's Thomas Potok, includes Robert Patton, Chris Symons, Steven Young and Catherine Schuman.The post Oak Ridge Turns to Deep Learning for Big Data Problems appeared first on insideHPC.

"Modern HPC systems do some things very similar to ordinary IT computing, but they also have some significant differences. Two key security challenges are the notions that traditional security solutions often are not effective given the paramount priority of high-performance in HPC. In addition, the need to make some HPC environments as open as possible to enable broad scientific collaboration and interactive HPC also presents a challenge."The post Video: Security in HPC Environments appeared first on insideHPC.

HPE has posted the preliminary preliminary agenda for HP-CAST at SC17 in Denver. Now open for registration, the event takes place Nov. 10-11 at the Grand Hyatt hotel.

Dr. Erwin Laure from the PDC Center for HPC in Sweden presented this talk at the 4th Human Brain Project School in Austria. The 4th HBP School offered a comprehensive program covering all aspects of software, hardware, simulation, databasing, robotics, machine learning and theory relevant to the HBP research program.The post Video: Introduction to High Performance Computing appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from the Heroes of Deep Learning series, Andrew Ng interviews Pieter Abbeel from UC Berkeley. "Work in Artificial Intelligence in the EECS department at Berkeley involves foundational research in core areas of knowledge representation, reasoning, learning, planning, decision-making, vision, robotics, speech and language processing. There are also significant efforts aimed at applying algorithmic advances to applied problems in a range of areas, including bioinformatics, networking and systems, search and information retrieval."The post Heroes of Deep Learning: Andrew Ng interviews Pieter Abbeel appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced $17.7 million in funding for 12 Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science (TRIPODS) projects, which will bring together the statistics, mathematics and theoretical computer science communities to develop the foundations of data science. Conducted at 14 institutions in 11 states, these projects will promote long-term research and training activities in data science that transcend disciplinary boundaries. "Data is accelerating the pace of scientific discovery and innovation," said Jim Kurose, NSF assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). "These new TRIPODS projects will help build the theoretical foundations of data science that will enable continued data-driven discovery and breakthroughs across all fields of science and engineering."The post NSF Announces $17.7 Million Funding for Data Science Projects appeared first on insideHPC.

Even though SC17 is still more than two months away, this year’s Exhibition is already setting records.We are excited to report that we have already smashed the record for both net square feet of exhibit space sold as well as the total number of exhibitors,” says Bronis R. de Supinski, SC17 Exhibits Chair from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “Whether industry or research – if you have anything to do with high performance computing, you need to have a presence at SC17. The SC exhibition floor is an exciting place to discover the latest innovations and make positive career-impacting connections.”The post SC17 Exhibition Setting Records appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from AWS Summit in Tel Aviv, Adrian Cockcroft describes how AWS gives Superpowers to Startups. "AWS offers low cost, on-demand IT solutions to help you build and launch your applications quickly and easily with minimum costs. With no upfront investments and a pay-as-you-go price model, you only pay for what you use, when you use it, to build your minimum viable product (MVP), experiment and iterate, all at low cost."The post Adrian Cockcroft on how AWS Gives Superpowers to Startups appeared first on insideHPC.

While practical Quantum Computing remains somewhere in the future, it is already starting to spark new Startup opportunities. "Quantum machine learning will power some of the most impactful and exciting near-term applications of quantum computing. The startups at the CDL are at the leading edge of this technology and will get early access to Rigetti's general-purpose quantum hardware and to Forest, one of the most sophisticated quantum programming environments in the world,” said Madhav Thattai, Chief Strategy Officer, Rigetti. “We’re looking forward to working with these pioneering individuals and teams to help create and accelerate the quantum application ecosystem.”The post Rigetti Computing helps Foster Quantum Machine Learning Startup Ecosystem appeared first on insideHPC.

The Ohio Supercomputer Center is help teachers like Sultana Nahar, Ph.D. conduct computational workshops as part of her lecture courses. Through physics and STEM courses and workshops, Nahar has been improving the computational skills of the scientific community one person at a time with the hope that more breakthroughs will be made. "One of the most important parts of STEM education and research is computation of parameters for solving real problems,” Nahar said. “It’s not easy to calculate and we need very high accuracy in our results, that can only be achieved through precise computations with high performance computer facilities."The post OSC Supercomputers Power STEM Learning Across the Globe appeared first on insideHPC.

"While MPI was originally developed for general purpose CPUs and is widely used in the HPC space in this capacity, MPI applications can also be developed and then deployed with the Intel Xeon Phi Processor. With the understanding of the algorithms that are used for a specific application, tremendous performance can be achieved by using a combination of OpenMP and MPI."The post Internode Programming With MPI and Intel Xeon Phi Processor appeared first on insideHPC.

This is the fifth and final entry in an insideHPC series that explores the HPC transition to the cloud and how this move can help create seamless HPC. This series, compiled in a complete Guide, covers cloud computing for HPC, why the OS is important, OpenStack fundamentals and more.The post Moving Toward the Cloud & Seamless HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

"While Quantum Computing is poised for significant growth and advancement, the emergent industry is currently fragmented and lacks a common communications framework,” said Whurley (William Hurley), chair, IEEE Quantum Computing Working Group. “IEEE P7130 marks an important milestone in the development of Quantum Computing by building consensus on a nomenclature that will bring the benefits of standardization, reduce confusion, and foster a more broadly accepted understanding for all stakeholders involved in advancing technology and solutions in the space.”The post IEEE Approves Standards Project for Quantum Computing Definitions appeared first on insideHPC.

In this Chip Chat podcast, Dr. Naveen Rao describes his work at the Artificial Intelligence Products Group (AIPG) at Intel. "The Intel Nervana Platform includes what you need to design, develop, and deploy state-of-the-art deep learning models. There’s no need for you to download multiple frameworks and libraries and to troubleshoot complex integration issues. Everything you need is included and “just works” to make building AI solutions as easy as possible."The post Podcast: A Look at the Intel Nervana Platform for AI appeared first on insideHPC.

Registration is now open for the 2017 NCSA Industry Conference. The event takes place Oct. 11-12 on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus. "This year’s conference provides attendees with the opportunity to experience the transformative power of high performance computing and big data as we showcase how the NCSA Industry Program is giving industry and government a competitive edge. Attendees will also get an exclusive look at new resources and collaboration opportunities, the chance to network with business leaders and domain experts, meet the future generation of HPC experts at our student reception, and hear several ground-breaking success stories of how NCSA is enabling computational breakthroughs and changing the world again.The post NCSA Industry Conference to Showcase Supercomputing Partnerships appeared first on insideHPC.

Today, Intel announced that its AI technology is being used by Microsoft to power their new accelerated deep learning platform, called Project Brainwave. "Project Brainwave achieves a major leap forward in both performance and flexibility for cloud-based serving of deep learning models. We designed the system for real-time AI, which means the system processes requests as fast as it receives them, with ultra-low latency. Real-time AI is becoming increasingly important as cloud infrastructures process live data streams, whether they be search queries, videos, sensor streams, or interactions with users."The post Intel FPGAs Accelerate Microsoft’s Project Brainwave appeared first on insideHPC.

Today ANSYS 18.2 was released. This latest release brings increased levels of accuracy, speed and ease-of-use – spurring more engineers to use simulation across every stage of the product lifecycle to design cutting-edge products more efficiently and economically. "Our customers rely on ANSYS engineering simulation technology to cut costs, limit late-stage design changes, and tame the toughest engineering challenges. This latest release continues to build upon the industry's most accurate simulation portfolio, offering enhanced speed and accuracy – enabling more users, no matter their level of experience, to reduce development time and increase product quality."The post ANSYS 18.2 Enhances Simulation Speed and Accuracy appeared first on insideHPC.

Today NCSA and Hyperion Research released a new study that examines HPC and Industry partnerships. Aimed at identifying and understanding best practices in partnerships between public high performance computing centers and private industry, the study aims to promote the vital transfer of scientific knowledge to industry and the important transfer of industrial experience to the scientific community.The post New Study Uncovers Best Practices for Effective Partnerships between Public HPC Centers and Industrial Users appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Atos in Europe announced a new reseller agreement in which Dell EMC will resell Atos’ high-end 8 to 16 sockets x86 Bullion servers. "Over the last few years, Dell EMC and Atos have been working together to combine Bullion servers and Dell EMC unified storage solutions to provide our customers with a leading solution for deployment of mission-critical SAP HANA projects," said Ravi Pendekanti, Senior Vice President at Dell EMC.The post Dell EMC Joins Atos Global Reseller Alliance appeared first on insideHPC.

Over at the SC17 Blog, Brian Ban begins his series of SC17 Session Previews with a look at a talk on High Performance Big Data. "Deep learning, using GPU clusters, is a clear example but many Machine Learning algorithms also need iteration, and HPC communication and optimizations."The post SC17 Invited Talk Preview: High Performance Machine Learning appeared first on insideHPC.

"Like the previous disruptions of clusters vs. monolithic systems or Linux vs. proprietary operating systems, cloud changes the status quo, takes us out of our comfort zone, and gives us a sense of lack of control. But the effect of price, the flexibility to dynamically change your system size and choose the best architecture for the job, the availability of applications, the ability to select system cost based on the needs of a particular workload, and the ability to provision and run immediately, will prove very attractive for HPC users."The post Gabriel Broner on Why Cloud is the Next Disruption in HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, Piush Patel describes how Intel Xeon Scalable Processors speed up Altair RADIOSS structural simulations with Hyperworks. "RADIOSS is a leading structural analysis solver for highly non-linear problems under dynamic loadings. It is used across all industries worldwide to improve the crashworthiness, safety, and manufacturability of structural designs."The post Intel Xeon Scalable Processors Speed Altair RADIOSS with Hyperworks appeared first on insideHPC.

Frameworks, applications, libraries and toolkits—journeying through the world of deep learning can be daunting. If you’re trying to decide whether or not to begin a machine or deep learning project, there are several points that should first be considered. This is the second article in a five-part series that covers the steps to take before launching a machine learning startup. This article covers popular machine learning technology.The post Machine Learning Technology: A Guide to Scaling Up and Out appeared first on insideHPC.

Despite the cloud hype, legacy HPC apps are alive and well. While it may seem like they can’t mix, the process of bursting these applications to the cloud is bringing these staples to cloud table. Avoiding rewrites can efficiently bring immediate HPC cloud benefits to organizations big and small. "Many technologies and solutions now available allow for the functional and highly efficient coordination and connection between legacy applications and the well-known advantages of the cloud."The post Unlike Oil and Water, Legacy and Cloud Mix Well appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, from Andrew Gibiansky from Baidu describes baidu-allreduce, a newly released C library that enables faster training of neural network models across many GPUs. The library demonstrates the allreduce algorithm, which you can embed into any MPI-enabled application. ""Neural networks have grown in scale over the past several years, and training can require a massive amount of data and computational resources. To provide the required amount of compute power, we scale models to dozens of GPUs using a technique common in high-performance computing but underused in deep learning."The post Video: Baidu Releases Fast Allreduce Library for Deep Learning appeared first on insideHPC.

Fayetteville State University is using Bright Cluster Manager for ground-breaking Artificial Intelligence research. Bright Cluster Manager enables the University to deploy complete clusters over bare metal and manage them effectively. Managing the hardware, operating system, HPC software, and its users is done with an elegant easy-to-use graphical user interface. With Bright Cluster Manager, IT/system administrators can quickly get clusters up and running and keep them running reliably throughout their lifecycle.The post Fayetteville State University Leverages Bright Cluster Manager for AI Research appeared first on insideHPC.