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

Today Bright Computing announced that it has been selected by Hyperion Research for a 2017 HPC Innovation Award for its ability to provision and manage virtual servers in Microsoft Azure. "Helping organizations easily create hybrid clouds is a critical scenario for many customers, especially those using HPC in the cloud for the first time. We are pleased that Bright Computing is already receiving industry recognition for its work with Microsoft Azure, and look forward to more to come from this collaboration.”The post Hyperion Research Recognizes Bright Computing for their Integration with Azure appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Asetek announced an additional order from Penguin Computing for an undisclosed HPC installation. "This repeat order reflects our strong partnership with Penguin Computing. It is also another confirmation of the increasing need for liquid cooling in high density HPC clusters,” said André Sloth Eriksen, CEO and founder of Asetek."The post Penguin Computing doubles down on Asetek Liquid Cooling appeared first on insideHPC.

Katrin Amunts from Jülich presented this keynote at the PASC17 conference. "The human brain has a multi-level organization and high complexity. New approaches are necessary to decode the brain with its 86 billion nerve cells, each with 10,000 connections. 3D Polarized Light Imaging, for example, elucidates the connectional architecture at the level of axons, while keeping the topography of the whole organ; it results in data sets of several petabytes per brain, which should be actively accessible while minimizing their transport. The Human Brain Project creates a cutting-edge HPC- and HPDA infrastructure to address such challenges including cloud-based collaboration and development platforms with databases, workflow systems, petabyte storage, and supercomputers."The post Video: Towards the Decoding of the Human Brain appeared first on insideHPC.

Last week at ISC 2017, the Russian RSC Group showcased its ultra high-dense scalable and energy efficient RSC Tornado cluster solution as well as a full set of components for modernizing HPC systems to become 100% hot liquid cooling. "The RSC Tornado is based on 72-core Intel Xeon PhiTM 7290 processor has established the world computing density record for x86 architecture in 1.41 Petaflops per cabinet or over 490 Teraflops/m3."The post RSC Group from Russia Brings Hot Water Cooling to HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

SHIELD is an innovative interconnect technology that improves data center fault recovery by 5000 times by enabling interconnect autonomous self-healing capabilities. “The CPU-centric data center architecture has come to an end and new data centers are now built based on a data-centric architecture. These systems require an intelligent interconnect that can deliver In-Network Computing and Self-healing capabilities, to ensure highest performance, scalability and resiliency."The post Video: New Mellanox SHIELD Technology Enables Self Healing Networks appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2017, Bill Wagner from Bright Computing describes the company's new capabilities for Cloud Bursting to Microsoft Azure. “Cloud bursting from an on-premises cluster to Microsoft Azure offers companies an efficient, cost-effective, secure and flexible way to add additional resources to their HPC infrastructure. Bright’s integration with Azure also gives our clients the ability to build an entire off-premises cluster for compute-intensive workloads in the Azure cloud platform.”The post Bright Computing Steps up with Cloud Bursting to Azure at ISC 2017 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from PASC17 in Lugano, Michele De Lorenzi from CSCS discussed the recent advancement of Piz Daint supercomputer to the #3 position on the TOP500. After that, he describes the mission of the PASC conference and the location of PASC18 next year.The post Interview: Piz Daint Supercomputer advances to the #3 position on the TOP500 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this special guest feature, Andrew Jones from NAG offers his perspective on ISC 2017. How he came to know such things is a mystery as Mr. Jones did not attend the show this year. One thing is for sure; from now on I'm going to assume his agents are everywhere.The post Andrew Jones wraps up ISC 2017 appeared first on insideHPC.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington are using TACC supercomputers to study the unique traits of snake evolution. Led by assistant professor of biology Todd Castoe, the team is exploring the genomes of snakes and lizards to answer critical questions about these creatures' evolutionary history. For instance, how did they develop venom? How do they regenerate their organs? And how do evolutionarily-derived variations in genes lead to variations in how organisms look and function? "Some of the most basic questions drive our research. Yet trying to understand the genetic explanations of such questions is surprisingly difficult considering most vertebrate genomes, including our own, are made up of literally billions of DNA bases that can determine how an organism looks and functions," says Castoe. "Understanding these links between differences in DNA and differences in form and function is central to understanding biology and disease, and investigating these critical links requires massive computing power."The post Supercomputing the Secrets of the Snake Genome at TACC appeared first on insideHPC.

This is the last of four articles on Intel Omni-Path Architecture (Intel OPA) next-generation fabric for high-performance computing (HPC) solutions. Intel OPA is in clusters used for traditional supercomputing, artificial intelligence (AI), HPC cloud, and in the enterprise.The post Intel Omni-Path Architecture: Incredible Momentum for a New Technology appeared first on insideHPC.

Haohuan Fu from Tsinghua University in China at the PASC17 conference in Lugano. "This talk reports efforts on refactoring and optimizing the climate and weather forecasting programs – CAM and WRF – on Sunway TaihuLight. To map the large code base to the millions of cores on the Sunway system, OpenACC-based refactoring was taken as the major approach, with source-to-source translator tools applied to exploit the most suitable parallelism for the CPE cluster and to fit the intermediate variable into the limited on-chip fast buffer."The post Video: Scaling Climate and Weather Forecasting on Sunway TaihuLight appeared first on insideHPC.

The 8th Irish Supercomputer List was released last week, featuring two new Top500-class machines. The new entrants, from an undisclosed software company, feature at spots 196 and 197 on the 49th Top500 Supercomputer List, each with a Linpack Rmax of 819.16 TFlop/s. This more than doubles the Irish HPC capacity, up from 1.46 PFlop/s to 3.01 Pflop/s.The post HPC Capacity Doubles on Irish Supercomputer List appeared first on insideHPC.

We interrupt our stream of serious HPC news for this post-ISC update from Europe. "After ISC wrapped up last week, I had the good fortune to join the First Annual Lustre Motorcycle Tour of the Alps. This amazing three day trip to us through Italy, Switzerland, and Austria."The post Video: The Amazing Lustre through the Alps Tour appeared first on insideHPC.

The Proceedings from ISC 2017 are now available for download at no cost for a limited time. "We are pleased to announce that many fascinating topics in HPC are covered by the proceedings."The post Proceedings from ISC 2017 are now available for download appeared first on insideHPC.

Today PEARC17 announced that 66 students will attend their conference coming up July 9-13 in New Orleans. PEARC17—Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2017—is for those engaged with the challenges of using and operating advanced research computing on campuses or for the academic and open science communities. This year’s inaugural conference offers a robust technical program, as well as networking, professional growth and multiple student participation opportunities.The post PEARC17 Seeds Next Generation of HPC Professionals appeared first on insideHPC.

In the world of HPC, moving data is a sin. That may be changing. "Just a few weeks ago, AIC announced the successful completion of a landmark, 1-petabyte transfer of data in 34 hours, during a recent test by Zettar that relied on the company's SB122A-PH, 1U 10-bay NVMe storage server. The milestone was reached using a unique 5000-mile 100Gbps loop which is a SDN layer over a shared, production 100G network operated by the US DOE's ESNet."The post How Zettar Transferred 1 Petabyte of Data in Just 34 Hours Using AIC Servers appeared first on insideHPC.

Today IBM announced they are collaborating with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) on a first-of-a-kind brain-inspired supercomputing system powered by a 64-chip array of the IBM TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System. The scalable platform IBM is building for AFRL will feature an end-to-end software ecosystem designed to enable deep neural-network learning and information discovery.The post AFRL Taps IBM to Build Brain-Inspired AI Supercomputer appeared first on insideHPC.

The University of Oregon High Performance Computing Research Core Facility (HPCRCF) is seeking a Computational Scientist in our Job of the Week. The HPCRCF is a new facility located on the campus of the UO in Eugene, Oregon. The mission of the HPCRCF is to support computational research at the UO and collaborating institutions, and is home to a new flagship research cluster.The post Job of the Week: Computational Scientist at the University of Oregon appeared first on insideHPC.

This week in Frankfurt, One Stop Systems showcased all-new HPC Appliances at ISC 2017. "One Stop Systems offers a wide variety of GPU and Flash appliances to support a range of customer needs,” Said Steve Cooper, CEO of One Stop Systems. “As GPU and flash technology continue to improve, OSS products are immediately able to accommodate the newest and most powerful GPUs and the highest capacity flash cards. Now we’re offering customers the opportunity to lease time on our HPC appliances through SkyScale. SkyScale utilizes OSS GPU appliances to build, configure, and manage dedicated systems strategically located in maximum-security facilities, allowing customers to focus on results while minimizing capital equipment investment.”The post One Stop Systems Showcases GPU and Flash Appliances at ISC appeared first on insideHPC.

In this RichReport podcast from the German Autobahn, Brent Gorda gives us a Lustre update from ISC 2017 in Frankfurt. "On the latest Top500 list, Lustre leads the pack with 9 systems out of the Top 10."The post Podcast: Brent Gorda on the State of Lustre at ISC 2017 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, Kim McMahon describes her new role as Diversity Chair for the ISC 2018 conference. "ISC has named me the Diversity Chair for ISC18. With this comes a position on the Steering Committee. While this is really cool in and of itself, I am very excited about the industry luminaries, experts, and innovators that I’ll get to meet and work with. The list of people on the ISC Steering Committee is a Who’s Who of the HPC industry! I am deeply honored with the trust ISC has placed in me and look forward to the upcoming year’s activities."The post Kim McMahon on her role as Diversity Chair at ISC 2018 appeared first on insideHPC.

Are you ready? ARM-based HPC systems will be available by the end of 2017. At ISC 2017, Penguin Computing and Bull both announced that they will deliver products tailored for the HPC industry. Both companies systems will feature Cavium’s ARMv8-based ThunderX2 platform.The post HPC Vendors showcase plans for ARM products appeared first on insideHPC.

Flying drone aircraft are no longer rare sightings these day. In fact, their may be one above you somewhere taking pictures at this very moment. This begs the question: how do we keep our skies safe? "Scientists at NASA Langley Research Center have developed a breakthrough technology called Safeguard that can alleviate hazards with unmanned aircrafts (UA) flying beyond their authorized perimeters and into no-fly zones. Safeguard works by continuously detecting a UAs proximity to virtual perimeters established around no-fly-zones taking action to guarantee the perimeters are not breached.The post NASA’s Develops SAFEGUARD Safety Net Technology for Drones appeared first on insideHPC.

Over at Lenovo, Gavin O'Hara writes that the world's most beautiful supercomputer center now sports a 13.7 Petaflop system so novel in design that it has captured the attention of the global HPC community. It landed at #13 on the TOP500 this week, and that's just the beginning.The post Simply Beautiful: MareNorstum4 Supercomputer Sports 13.7 Petaflops appeared first on insideHPC.

Intel® Math Kernel Library 2017 (Intel® MKL 2017) includes new GEMM kernels that are optimized for various skewed matrix sizes. The new kernels take advantage of Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512) and achieves high GEMM performance on multicore and many-core Intel® architectures, particularly for situations arising from deep neural networks..The post Deep Learning Frameworks Get a Performance Benefit from Intel MKL Matrix-Matrix Multiplication appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Inspur unveiled GX4, a new flexible and high scalability AI accelerating box at ISC 2017. The GX4 is able to achieve the decoupling coprocessor resources including CPU and GPU, Xeon Phi and FPGA, expand the computing power on demand, and provide highly flexible support to various AI applications in GPU-accelerated computing. This is another innovative effort followed by the release of the ultra-high density AI supercomputer AGX-2 last month at GTC 2017 in California. "According to Jay Zhang from Inspur, the GX4 sufficiently addresses the major differences in the AI deep-learning training model, using a flexible expansion method to support different levels of AI training models, and effectively lowering energy consumption and delays. The GX4 provides a flexible and innovative AI computing solution for companies and research organizations engaged in artificial intelligence across the world."The post Inspur Unveils GX4 Ai Accelerator appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2017, Trish Damkroger from Intel describes the company’s vision for HPC as more and more workloads move to the Cloud. She then goes on to preview the full week of Intel’s ISC activities. "Intel is transforming the future of high-performance computing with new tools for innovation and discovery.The post Intel’s Trish Damkroger on why HPC Matters at ISC 2017 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2017, Pradeep Dubey, Intel Fellow and Director of the Parallel Computing Lab at Intel, discusses how artificial intelligence impacts a wide range of industries and is driving the need for massive amounts of compute power enabled by Intel.The post How Intel is bringing AI & Machine Learning to the People appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Penguin Computing, a provider of high-performance computing, enterprise datacenter and cloud solutions, announced availability of its Tundra Extreme Scale (ES) server platforms based on Cavium second-generation ARMv8-based ThunderX2 processors. Tundra ES Valkre servers powered by ThunderX2 processors are now available for public order, and a standard 19” rack mount models will ship in 3rd Calendar Quarter 2017. "Penguin Computing is the leading developer of open, Linux-based, HPC, cloud, and enterprise data center solutions,” said Jussi Kukkonen, Vice President, Advanced Solutions, Penguin Computing. “By extending our product roadmap to Cavium's second generation 64-bit ARMv8 CPUs in our Tundra family of Open Compute servers we again step up our leadership position. Our customers get outstanding value from the efficiency and flexibility enabled by OCP infrastructure combined with best-in-class compute performance coming from Cavium's ThunderX2 offering.”The post Cavium’s ThunderX2 Processors coming to Penguin Computing Tundra OCP Platform appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Lenovo announced the deployment of the world’s largest, next-generation Intel-based Supercomputer at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The 11.1 petaFLOP1 Supercomputer called MareNostrum 4, will be housed in the world’s “most beautiful data center”at the Chapel Torre Girona at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, and will be used to power diverse science from human genome research, bioinformatics and biomechanics to weather forecasting and atmospheric composition. This new system, which will continue to grow over time, is listed at #13 on the latest TOP500 list that was released this week. "The fast delivery, installation and optimization of the MareNostrum 4 system at BSC, showcases Lenovo’s end-to-end, high-performance computing strength,” said Kirk Skaugen, President of Lenovo Data Center Group. “Building on our 25 years of history in x86 server computing and our number one position in x86 server customer satisfaction and reliability, our goal at Lenovo is to be the largest supercomputing company on earth helping solve humanities biggest challenges through the rapid advancement of technology and innovation.”The post Lenovo Powers World’s Largest Skylake Cluster at Barcelona Supercomputing Center appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2017, Molly Presley from Quantum describes the company's advanced storage solutions for high performance computing. "At the core of all Quantum scale-out storage is StorNext advanced data management—engineered to tackle the world’s most demanding data-intensive workloads, with the performance and efficiency needed to cost-effectively achieve desired business results."The post Video: Quantum Steps up with High Speed Parallel Storage at ISC 2017 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Univa announced the contribution of its Universal Resource Broker (URB) technology to the open-source community. "Open source software is critical in the modern application container ecosystem and market, where availability, flexibility and integration can be enhanced by open source software components and frameworks.“ said Jay Lyman, principal analyst for 451 Research. “Univa's URB also supports the variety of software - including big data, continuous integration and container management and orchestration technology - that is critical to success in enterprise IT today. “The post Univa Contributes Universal Resource Broker to Open Source Community appeared first on insideHPC.

Today CoolIT Systems announced a collaboration with Dell EMC to provide a factory-installed Direct Contact Liquid Cooling solution to address power and cooling challenges for a wide range of customers, especially in verticals such as High Performance Computing and High Frequency Trading. "As data center demands continue to rise globally, Dell EMC is at the forefront of delivering highly efficient, factory-installed liquid cooled PowerEdge servers,” said Patrick McGinn, Vice President Product Marketing at CoolIT Systems. “CoolIT Systems is proud to enable greener data centers through its patented Direct Contact Liquid Cooling technology and anticipates further success from the innovative collaboration with Dell EMC.”The post CoolIT Systems Teams with Dell EMC as Liquid Cooling Supplier to Enable Greener Datacenters appeared first on insideHPC.

Sharing a common architecture, Intel® HPC Orchestrator and OpenHPC are changing the face of HPC by providing a cohesive and comprehensive system software stack. Dr. Robert Wisniewski, Chief Software Architect Extreme Scale Computing at Intel Corporation, discusses the advantages of this approach and how to leverage it to bring together HPC and the cloud.The post Intel® HPC Orchestrator and OpenHPC: Trends and Directions appeared first on insideHPC.

In this special guest feature, Sarp Oral from ORNL writes that the recent LUG Lustre User Group meeting in Indiana has set a new course for the popular parallel file system. “LUG is the premier event for the Lustre community and brings together developers, system architects and administrators, and users from all around the world to discuss the current status and future roadmap of Lustre."The post Lustre Moves Forward: A Wrapup of LUG 2017 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2017, Dr. Eng Lim Goh from HPE discusses the company's recent PathForward award as well as the challenges of designing energy efficient Exascale systems. After that, he gives his unique perspective on HPE's "The Machine" architecture for memory-driven computing. “The work funded by PathForward will include development of innovative memory architectures, higher-speed interconnects, improved reliability systems, and approaches for increasing computing power without prohibitive increases in energy demand."The post Dr. Eng Lim Goh on HPE’s Recent PathForward Award for Exascale Computing appeared first on insideHPC.

Today CEO Quest appointed Brent Gorda as Managing Director. Gorda will coach startup CEOs across the globe that lead companies involved in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & High-Performance Computing. Gorda brings 30 years of leadership, entrepreneurship, and expertise in technology to his new role. "I am delighted that Brent is joining our CEO Quest team. He's widely regarded as a world-class authority in the big data space, and he's a proven entrepreneur and leader," said Tom Mohr, founder and CEO of CEO Quest.The post CEO Quest Names Brent Gorda Managing Director appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Nvidia announced that the NVIDIA Tesla AI supercomputing platform powers the top 13 measured systems on the new Green500 list of the world’s most energy-efficient high performance computing systems. All 13 use NVIDIA Tesla P100 data center GPU accelerators, including four systems based on the NVIDIA DGX-1 AI supercomputer. "NVIDIA also released performance data illustrating that NVIDIA Tesla GPUs have improved performance for HPC applications by 3X over the Kepler architecture released two years ago. This significantly boosts performance beyond what would have been predicted by Moore’s Law, even before it began slowing in recent years."The post NVIDIA Powers Top 13 Most Energy Efficient Supercomputers appeared first on insideHPC.

“Today, customer’s HPC requirements go beyond superior performance and efficiency,” said Bill Mannel, Vice President and General Manager, HPC and AI solutions, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “They are also increasingly considering security, agility and cost control. With today’s announcements, we are addressing these considerations and delivering optimized systems, infrastructure management and services capabilities that provide A New Compute Experience.”The post Video: HPE Moves HPC & Deep Learning Forward at ISC 2017 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2017, Gilad Shainer from Mellanox discusses the company's newest announcements for HPC: New Shield Technology Brings Self Healing to Networks, InfiniBand continues to grow on the TOP500, and how RDMA is enabling Machine Learning at Scale.The post Video: InfiniBand Accelerates Majority of New Systems on TOP500 List appeared first on insideHPC.

Today ISC 2017 announced that a record 3200 HPC enthusiasts from 60 countries have registered for the conference. The event also received an international media spotlight, with 60 technical and business journalists on site to provide live coverage of the exhibition and the conference sessions.The post ISC 2017 Announces Record Attendance appeared first on insideHPC.

In this podcast from ISC 2017 in Frankfurt, the Radio Free HPC team sits down with Scott Misage from Intel to learn why Intel Omni-Path has gained momentum on the TOP500. “Intel Omni-Path Architecture delivers the performance for tomorrow’s high performance computing workloads and the ability to scale to tens of thousands of nodes—and eventually more—at a price competitive with today’s fabrics. The Intel OPA 100 Series product line is an end-to-end solution of PCIe* adapters, silicon, switches, cables, and management software. As the successor to Intel® True Scale Fabric, this optimized HPC fabric is built upon a combination of enhanced IP and Intel technology.”The post Podcast: Intel Omni-Path Rocks the TOP500 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the OpenACC standards group announced plans to showcase new advancements and increasing momentum for their programming model at ISC 2017 in Frankfurt. "OpenACC is a user-driven directive-based performance-portable parallel programming model designed for scientists and engineers interested in porting their codes to a wide-variety of heterogeneous HPC hardware platforms and architectures with significantly less programming effort than required with a low-level or explicit models."The post OpenACC Takes Off at ISC17 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the latest TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. It’s Day 1 here at the ISC 2017 conference, and we’ll be keeping you posted on all the news as the show goes June 18-22 in Frankfurt, Germany.The post Radio Free HPC Runs Down the Latest TOP500 appeared first on insideHPC.

Rodger Edberg from NCI presented this talk at the PBS User Group meeting in Las Vegas. "As Australia’s national research computing service, the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) provides world-class, high-end services to Australian researchers, including access to advanced computational and data-intensive methods, support, and high-performance infrastructure. NCI supports computationally-based research with a focus on the environment, climate and earth system science in particular. Since 2007, NCI’s infrastructure investments, which exceed $80M, have been provided by the Australian Government under its National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and Super Science Initiatives."The post Video: PBS Pro Manages Workloads at NCI in Australia appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Spectra Logic their annual review of the data storage industry. The report provides insight for storage and media manufacturers, application developers and enterprise storage customers into the trends, pricing and technology shaping the data storage industry, and projects future storage needs and the technologies with the best chance of satisfying them. "The world’s repository of data is growing more rapidly than we could have imagined. At the same time, organizations are more reliant than ever on digital assets, and must protect and preserve access to this data forever,” said Spectra Logic CEO Nathan Thompson. “This is a unique time for the data storage industry, and we are proud to take a leadership role in helping the industry anticipate the trends, tiers and technologies of the future.”The post Podcast: Spectra Logic Report looks at the State of Data Storage appeared first on insideHPC.

Over the last two years, E4 Computer Engineering and QCT have worked in close collaboration to supply CERN with thousands of server systems, cores and Petabytes of storage. "E4 has successfully supplied us with reliable and performant servers of the QCT brand over the last couple of years,” said Olof Bärring, Deputy Head of the computing facilities group, IT department, CERN. “The systems have proved to be suitable for different purposes ranging from High Throughput Computing (HTC) number crunching of physics data coming from LHC experiments to High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters for the CERN theory group. We are also very pleased with the reliable deliveries, the warranty support provided.”The post E4 Engineering Powers CERN with Quanta Cloud Technology appeared first on insideHPC.

In this special guest feature, Kim McMahon checks in from Frankfurt to give us a preview of ISC 2017. There is much in store this week, so be sure not to miss a beat!The post 10 Things Not to Miss at ISC 2017 in Frankfurt appeared first on insideHPC.

The recently published Department of Energy FY 2018 Congressional Budget Request has raised a lot of questions about the Aurora supercomputer that was scheduled to be deployed at Argonne ALCF next year. "As we covered in our Radio Free HPC podcast, Aurora appears to be morphing into a very different kind of machine."The post Is Aurora Morphing into an Exascale AI Supercomputer? appeared first on insideHPC.

"In this presentation, Andy Rudoff from Intel reports on the latest developments around persistent memory programming. He’ll describing current discussions in the SNIA NVM Programming Technical Work Group, the current state of operating system support, recent tool and library development, and finally he’ll describe some of the upcoming challenges for high performance persistent memory use."The post Persistent Memory Programming: The Current State of the Ecosystem appeared first on insideHPC.