High-Performance Computing News Analysis | insideHPC

CocoLink, a subsidiary of Seoul National University, in collaboration with Orange Silicon Valley, has upgraded its KLIMAX 210 server with 20 of the latest GeForce 1080 GPUs – with the eventual goal of scaling the single 4U rack to more than 200 teraflops.The post CocoLink Using Consumer GPUs for Deep Learning appeared first on insideHPC.

Today SGI announced Zero Watt Storage, a powerful extension to its SGI DMF data management platform designed to meet growing customer demands for managing critical data. This solution was developed by SGI to offer its DMF customers fast, disk-based access to their near line data that significantly outperforms cloud storage in terms of costs and access speed up to 5X.The post Managing Critical Data with SGI’s New Zero Watt Storage appeared first on insideHPC.

Intel® Cilk™ Plus is an extension to C and C++ that offers a quick and easy way to harness the power of both multicore and vector processing. The three Intel Cilk Plus keywords provide a simple yet surprisingly powerful model for parallel programming, while runtime and template libraries offer a well-tuned environment for building parallel applications.The post Cilk Plus from Intel Offers Easy Access to Performance appeared first on insideHPC.

An eye-popping visualization of two black holes colliding demonstrates 3D Adaptive Mesh Refinement volume rendering on next-generation Intel® Xeon Phi™ processors. "It simplifies things when you can run on a single processor and not have to offload the visualization work,” says Juha Jäykkä, system manager of the COSMOS supercomputer. Dr. Jäykkä holds a doctorate in theoretical physics and also serves as a scientific consultant to the system’s users. “Programming is easier. The Intel Xeon Phi processor architecture is the next step for getting more performance and more power efficiency, and it is refreshingly convenient to use.”The post Faster Route to Insights with Hardware and Visualization Advances from Intel appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Mellanox announced the availability of new software drivers for RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet). The new drivers are designed to simplify RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) deployments on Ethernet networks and enable high-end performance using RoCE, without requiring the network to be configured for lossless operation. This enables cloud, storage, and enterprise customers to deploy RoCE more quickly and easily while accelerating application performance, improving infrastructure efficiency and reducing cost.The post Mellanox Enhances RoCE Software to Simplify RDMA Deployments appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the Open MPI Team announced the release of Open MPI version 2.0.0. Version 2 is a major new release series containing many new features and bug fixes.The post Open MPI 2.0.0 Released appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Simulationclusters.com announced it is now running Intel’s E5-2600 v4 processors. A site for real-time demonstration of the ROI of upgrading from a workstation to an HPC cluster, Simulationsclusters.com is a collaboration between Nor-Tech, Intel, and Dassault Systèmes that showcases benchmarks with the new processors that show dramatic performance increases and significant cost benefits.The post Simulationclusters.com Shows ROI from Intel v4 Processors appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from PASC16, Peter Messmer from Nvidia gives his perspectives on the conference and his work on co-design for high performance computing. "Using a combination of specialized rather than one type fits all processing elements offers the advantage of providing the most economical hardware for each task in a complex application. In order to produce optimal codes for such heterogeneous systems, application developers will need to design algorithms with the architectural options in mind."The post Video: Nvidia’s Peter Messmer on Co-Design at PASC16 appeared first on insideHPC.

The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro is embarking on ground-breaking energy research powered by a new SGI Computer. The high performance computing system will be installed through the SGI valued partner, Versatus HPC.The post SGI Powers Energy Research at UFRJ in Brazil appeared first on insideHPC.

"With an imminent switchover to a new Cray system with next-generation Intel Xeon Phi Processors (codenamed Knights Landing) planned for October, the ACCMS team at Kyoto University is eagerly looking forward to a potential two-fold application performance improvements from its new system. But the lab is also well aware that there is significant recoding work ahead before the promise of the new manycore technology can be realized."The post Kyoto University Thinks Widening SIMD Will be Key to Performance Gains in New Intel Xeon Phi processor-based Cray System appeared first on insideHPC.

In this podcast from ISC 2016 in Frankfurt, Steve Pawlowski from Micron discusses the latest memory technology trends for high performance computing. "When you look at a technology like 3D XPoint and some of the new materials the industry is looking at, those latencies are becoming more DRAM-like, which makes them a more attractive option to look at. Is there a way we can actually inject persistent memory that’s fairly high-performance so we don’t take a performance hit but we can certainly increase the capacity on a cost-per-bit basis versus what we have today?"The post Podcast: Micron’s Steve Pawlowski on the Latest Memory Trends for HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

In this special guest feature, Robert Roe from Scientific Computing World writes that the new #1 system on the TOP500 is using home-grown processors to shake up the supercomputer industry. "While the system does have a focus towards computation, as opposed to the more data-centric computing strategies that we have begun to see implemented in the US and Europe, it is most certainly not just a Linpack supercomputer. The report explains that there are already three applications running on the Sunway TaihuLight system which are finalists for the Gordon Bell Award at SC16."The post China Leads TOP500 with Home-grown Technology appeared first on insideHPC.

"Data Science and Information Systems researchers at UQ are tackling the challenges of big data, real-time analytics, data modeling and smart information use. The cutting-edge solutions developed at UQ will lead to user empowerment at an individual, corporate and societal level. Our researchers are making a sustained and influential contribution to the management, modeling, governance, integration, analysis and use of very large quantities of diverse and complex data in an interconnected world."The post Video: Data Storage Infrastructure at University of Queensland appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the Institute for Research in Biomedicine and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center unveiled Nostrum BioDiscovery, a new biotech company that applies computational simulation to help new drugs and biotech molecules to reach the market.The post Nostrum BioDiscovery to Apply Supercomputing for Drug Development appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, CoolIT Systems CEO & CTO, Geoff Lyon, reveals details on the company’s next generation liquid cooling solutions for HPC, Cloud and Enterprise markets during ISC HPC 2016 in Frankfurt. Discussion highlights include OEM server solutions, customer case studies, product launches and more. "To learn more about how CoolIT Systems products and solutions maximize data center performance and efficiency whilst significantly reducing OPEX and overall TCO, visit www.coolitsystems.com."The post The Liquid Cooling Revolution Continues for HPC with CoolIT Systems appeared first on insideHPC.

In this podcast, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin discuss how they are using TACC supercomputers to find a new way to make controlled beams of gamma rays. "The simulations done on the Stampede and Lonestar systems at TACC will guide a real experiment later this summer in 2016 with the recently upgraded Texas Petawatt Laser, one of the most powerful in the world. The scientists say the quest for producing gamma rays from non-radioactive materials will advance basic understanding of things like the inside of stars. What's more, gamma rays are used by hospitals to eradicate cancer, image the brain, and they're used to scan cargo containers for terrorist materials. Unfortunately no one has yet been able to produce gamma ray beams from non-radioactive sources. These scientists hope to change that."The post Podcast: Supercomputing Better Ways to Produce Gamma Rays appeared first on insideHPC.

The LAD'16 conference has issued its Call for Presentations. Hosted jointly by CEA, EOFS, and OpenSFS, the Lustre Administrator & Developer Conference will take place Sept. 20-21 in Paris.The post Call for Lustre Presentations: LAD’16 in Paris appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from the Transtec booth at ISC 2016, Piotr Wachowicz from Bright Computing shows how the company's cluster management software enables customers to configure and monitor OpenStack systems. "Bright Cluster Manager provides a unified enterprise-grade solution for provisioning, scheduling, monitoring and management of HPC and Big Data systems in your data center and in the cloud. Our dynamic cloud provisioning optimizes cloud utilization by automatically creating servers when they’re needed and releasing them when they’re not. Bright OpenStack provides a complete cloud solution that is easy to deploy and manage."The post Video: Deploying OpenStack Solutions with Bright Computing & Transtec appeared first on insideHPC.

Registration is now open for a free Workflows Workshop to be held August 9-10 at multiple institutions across the country. Sponsored by the Blue Waters sustained-petascale computing project, this workshop will provide an overview of workflows and how they can enhance research productivity.The post Register Now for HPC Workflow Workshops appeared first on insideHPC.

Organizations that implement high-performance computing (HPC) technologies have a wide range of requirements. From small manufacturing suppliers to national research institutions, using significant computing technologies is critical to creating innovative products and leading-edge research. No two HPC installations are the same. For maximum return, budget, software requirements, performance and customization all must be considered before installing and operating a successful environment.The post Successful Implementations That Demand Flexible HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

Businesses in the north west of the UK are being helped to develop new products faster and more cheaply. The advanced engineering technology centre was officially opened today at the Science and Technology Facility’s Council’s (STFC) Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire. It will provide UK businesses of all sizes, including small start-ups, with affordable access to more than £2 million of advanced engineering technology, including advanced 3D printing and rapid prototype assistance.The post STFC in the UK Opens New Technology Center appeared first on insideHPC.

"This talk will describe one new effort to embed best practices for reproducible scientific computing into traditional university curriculum. In particular, a set of open source, liberally licensed, IPython (now Jupyter) notebooks are being developed and tested to accompany a book “Effective Computation in Physics.” These interactive lecture materials lay out in-class exercises for a project-driven upper-level undergraduate course and are accordingly intended to be forked, modified and reused by professors across universities and disciplines."The post Video: A Computational Future for Science Education appeared first on insideHPC.

A new World Record was set by the Huazhong University team at the Student Cluster Competition at ISC 2016. Using Nvidia Tesla K80 GPUs, the team recorded 12.56 teraflops on the LINPACK benchmark, while staying within a 3-Kw power consumption limit.The post China Team Sets New World Record appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from the Women in HPC Workshop at ISC 2016, Kim McMahon moderates a panel discussion on Diversity in the Workplace. The panel will discuss methods that to improve workplace diversity, the challenges, successes and pitfalls they have experienced.The post WHPC Panel Looks at Diversity in the Workplace appeared first on insideHPC.

DDN has opened a research and development center in Paris, in response to strong demand the French market and across Europe for high-performance big data storage solutions. DDN’s Newly Created Research and Development Centre, located in the Meudon area of Paris, will develop advanced end-to-end data lifecycle management technology, and a local technical presence for its European customer base - increasing scope for innovation and collaboration.The post DDN Opens New Techology Center in Paris appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2016, Karl Schultz from the OpenHPC Community provides and update on software releases and other milestones. "OpenHPC is a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project whose mission is to provide an integrated collection of HPC-centric components that can be used to provide full-featured reference HPC software stacks. Provided components should range across the entire HPC software ecosystem including provisioning and system administration tools, resource management, I/O services, development tools, numerical libraries, and performance analysis tools."The post OpenHPC Moves Forward with New Software Release appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Bright Computing announced that Linvision has become the latest company to join the Bright Computing partner network, to serve customers across Benelux, France and Germany. "At Linvision, we see a high demand from organizations for state of the art HPC systems that enable projects to be carried out efficiently and cost-effectively," said Karin Peeters, CEO at Linvision. "I’m excited that Bright and Linvision can enter this market together, to see how we can support our customers with their evolving business challenges.”The post Linvision in the Netherlands Joins Bright Partner Community appeared first on insideHPC.

The Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) has published a 3D timeline celebrating thirty years of service. With the launch of an interactive timeline, viewers can explore ESnet’s history and contributions.The post ESnet Timeline Celebrates 30 Years of Servicing Science appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2016, Marc Hamilton from Nvidia describes the new DGX-1 Deep Learning Supercomputer. "The NVIDIA DGX-1 is the world's first purpose-built system for deep learning with fully integrated hardware and software that can be deployed quickly and easily. Its revolutionary performance significantly accelerates training time, making the NVIDIA DGX-1 the world's first deep learning supercomputer in a box."The post Nvidia Showcases DGX-1 Deep Learning Supercomputer at ISC 2016 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, Prof. John Morrison from University College Cork describes the CloudLightning project. CloudLightning’s vision is a European economy that thrives and leads the world in the provision and adoption of high performance cloud computing services. Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Program, CloudLightning brings together eight project partners from five countries across Europe.The post CloudLightning Project Looks to Self-Managed HPC Services appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2016, Bill Nitzberg provides an update on Alair's release of source code for PBS Professional Workload Manager. "Altair is making a big investment toward uniting the whole HPC community to accelerate the state of the art (and the state of actual production operations) for HPC scheduling. We are dual-licensing PBS Professional, both open source and commercial."The post PBS Pro from Altair Goes Open Source at ISC 2016 appeared first on insideHPC.

"For now, InfiniBand and its vendor community, notably Mellanox appear to have the upper hand from a performance and market presence perspective, but with Intel entering the HPI market, and new server architectures based on ARM and Power making a new claim on high performance servers, it is clear that a new industry phase is beginning. A healthy war chest combined with a well-executed strategy can certainly influence a successful outcome."The post OrionX Reports Position InfiniBand as the Leading HPI Technology and Mellanox the Leading Vendor appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Russia's RSC Group announced that the company has received the elite HPC Data Center Specialist partner status from Intel Corporation, confirming the very high level competence of company’s employees and its business experience in development and deployment of HPC solutions based on Intel server products. According to RSC, only 12 companies in the EMEA region have received such recognition while only 35 Intel partners have received it worldwide.The post Russia’s RSC Group Receives Intel HPC Data Center Specialist Status appeared first on insideHPC.

At ISC 2016, Supermicro debuted the latest innovations in HPC architectures and technologies including a 2U 4-Node server supporting new Intel Xeon Phi processors (formerly code named Knights Landing) with integrated or external Intel Omni-Path fabric option, together with associated 4U/Tower development workstation; 1U SuperServer supporting up to 4 GPU including the next generation P100 GPU; Lustre High Performance File system; and 1U 48-port top-of-rack network switch with 100Gbps Intel Omni-Path Architecture (OPA) providing a unique HPC cluster solution offering excellent bandwidth, latency and message rate that is highly scalable and easily serviceable.The post Supermicro Showcases Intel Xeon Phi and Nvidia P100 Solutions at ISC 2016 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) and the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) today announced that 204 of the world’s most powerful supercomputers accelerate performance through InfiniBand and OpenFabrics Software (OFS). At 41 percent of the TOP500 List, the InfiniBand fabric, together with OFS open source software, continues to be the interconnect of choice for the leading supercomputing systems. Furthermore, InfiniBand and OFS systems outperform competing technologies in overall efficiency, scoring an 85 percent list average for compute efficiency—with one system achieving a remarkable 99.8 percent.The post InfiniBand Continues Dominance of TOP500 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the HPC Advisory Council announced the final results of the ISC 2016 Student Cluster Competition and the opening of 2017 team submissions. For the third time, South Africa’s Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) student team came away as the SCC Grand Champions, the first ‘three-peat’ in the history of the competition. The overall winners […]The post CHPC Takes Top Honors Once Again at ISC-HPCAC Student Cluster Competition appeared first on insideHPC.

"This workshop aims to recognize and discuss the challenges faced by women, one of many underrepresented groups that exist in HPC, as well as opportunities for broadening participation in HPC fields and activities to encourage women to enter the field with consideration of differing legislation affecting hiring and employment practices among the different countries. A keynote address and panel discussion will focus on strategies implemented by employers to diversify the HPC workforce and discuss the efficacy of the approaches."The post Women in HPC Keynote: Evidence-based Advice on Diversifying the HPC Community appeared first on insideHPC.

The Centre for Modeling & Simulation (CFMS) in the UK has announced it will be leading the Future Engineering System (FES) Project. FES brings together CFMS, aerospace prime Rolls-Royce, leading global engineering and technology services company Siemens, systems integrator Sysemia and digital quality specialist eQ-Technologic with academic specialists from the Sheffield Advanced Computing Research Centre and Leeds University Socio-Technical Centre. The consortium will develop and demonstrate a prototype future engineering system infrastructure to fully integrate engineering data sources within the process lifecycle management (PLM) tool chain.The post CFMS in the UK to lead Future Engineering System Research Project appeared first on insideHPC.

The University of Michigan is seeking a new of Director IT Engineering and Research Development in our Job of the Week. "The Director IT Engineering & Research Development position will be working in a highly collaborative manner with the research community in the University to analyze research needs and design solutions and provide leadership in the proposals for developing applications/solutions needed to successfully support the design and implementation of new network system capabilities; mobile and distributed systems research projects."The post Job of the Week: Director IT Engineering and Research Development at University of Michigan appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2016, Steve Branton from Asetek describes the company's innovative liquid cooling solutions for HPC. "Because liquid is 4,000 times better at storing and transferring heat than air, Asetek's solutions provide immediate and measurable benefits to large and small data centers alike. RackCDU D2C is a “free cooling” solution that captures between 60% and 80% of server heat, reducing data center cooling cost by over 50% and allowing 2.5x-5x increases in data center server density. D2C removes heat from CPUs, GPUs, memory modules within servers using water as hot as 40°C (105°F), eliminating the need for chilling to cool these components."The post Video: Asetek Showcases Liquid Cooling at ISC 2016 appeared first on insideHPC.

Properly managed HPC supercomputers can deliver sustained Return on Investment for production supercomputing. To ensure ongoing operations are at peak efficiency, system management capabilities should not only include system monitoring and configuration tools, but also workload management, automated power capping, and error and fault detection capabilities.The post Review of the SGI Management Suite appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from the Transtec booth at ISC 2016, Sven Breuner from ThinkParQ describes how the BeeGFS parallel file system delivers performance, reliability, and flexibility to their HPC solutions. Transtec builds HPC solutions from a host of technologies including BeeGFS. "BeeGFS (formerly FhGFS) is the leading parallel cluster file system, developed with a strong focus on performance and designed for veryeasy installation and management. If I/O intensive workloads are your problem, BeeGFS is the solution."The post Video: Transtec Delivers BeeGFS for HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

In this WBEZ podcast, Katherine Riley from Argonne explains what a supercomputer does. "Argonne National Laboratory is celebrating its 70th anniversary. The science and engineering research center has had a prominent place in historical research developments. They’re currently in the process of installing their newewst supercomputer, Theta."The post Podcast: What a Supercomputer Does appeared first on insideHPC.

"So one of the things that we've really been very proud of, in terms of our progress, particularly in EMEA over the last 12 months, is we've deployed a number of really significant systems. If you remember when we were back together actually at SC15 in Austin. One of the big pieces of news that we were very proud of was our presence in the top 10, 4 of them are actually powered by Seagate. Even more impressive is that 100% of the newest systems are powered by Seagate. When you peel that layer back just a little bit further, actually three of those four systems are actually from Europe and the Middle East."The post Interview: Seagate Powers Four TOP10 HPC Sites at ISC 2016 appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2016, Bill Bryce from Univa describes the company's innovative container technology helps customers manage their computing workloads with Univa Grid Engine. "Grid Engine 8.4.0 has many significant updates including Docker support and integration with the new Intel Xeon Phi processor," said Bill Bryce, Vice President of Products at Univa. "This latest release will allow a user or administrator to schedule jobs so that the right business-critical jobs are prioritized over other workloads-thus maximizing shared resources and allowing Univa customers to gain velocity."The post Video: Univa Grid Engine Speeds Workloads with Intel Xeon Phi Processor appeared first on insideHPC.

Organizations that implement high-performance computing (HPC) technologies have a wide range of requirements. From small manufacturing suppliers to national research institutions, using significant computing technologies is critical to creating innovative products and leading-edge research. No two HPC installations are the same. "For maximum return, budget, software requirements, performance and customization all must be considered before installing and operating a successful environment."The post TYAN Solutions for Flexible HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

The University of Melbourne has launched a new HPC service called Spartan that combines traditional HPC with a flexible cloud computing component. "Many research projects demand high speed interconnect," said Bernard Meade, Head of Research Computer Services at the University of Melbourne. "Spartan can quickly scale into cloud based virtual machines as needed, and expand the HPC system as user needs evolve. Traditional HPC systems are typically tailored for a few specific use cases, but in practice are used for a much wider variety of applications, resulting in less than optimal usage.”The post Spartan HPC Service Launches Down Under appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2016, Estela Suarez from the Jülich Supercomputing Centre provides an update on the DEEP-ER project, which is paving the way towards Exascale computing. "In the predecessor DEEP project, an innovative architecture for heterogeneous HPC systems has been developed based on the combination of a standard HPC Cluster and a tightly connected HPC Booster built of many- core processors. DEEP-ER now evolves this architecture to address two significant Exascale computing challenges: highly scalable and efficient parallel I/O and system resiliency. Co-Design is key to tackle these challenges – through thoroughly integrated development of new hardware and software components, fine-tuned with actual HPC applications in mind."The post Video: DEEP-ER Project Moves Europe Closer to Exascale appeared first on insideHPC.

Researchers are using the Gordon supercomputer at SDSC to paint a new picture of global warming’s impact on the complex processes that drive ocean mixing in the vast eddies swirling off the California coast. "Nearly a fifth of the worldwide ocean productivity is in these zones, and no one has really looked with this level of detail at the climate change implications for these precious marine areas,” said Renault."The post New Ocean Current Simulations Reflect Climate Change appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from ISC 2016, Thomas Blum from Germany's Megware describes the company's innovative hot water cooling system. The Slide SX-LC system is cooled by 50 degree celsius water on the input side with an output water temperature of 80 degrees celsius.The post Video: Megware Direct Liquid Cooling at ISC 2016 appeared first on insideHPC.