High-Performance Computing News Analysis | insideHPC

"It was indicated in my keynote this morning there are two really fundamental challenges we're facing in the next two years in all sorts of computing - from supercomputers to cell phones. The first is that of energy efficiency. With the end of Dennard scaling, we're no longer getting a big improvement in performance per watt from each technology generation. The performance improvement has dropped from a factor of 2.8 x back when we used to scale supply voltage with each new generation, now to about 1.3 x in the post-Dennard era. With this comes a real challenge for us to come up with architecture techniques and circuit techniques for better performance per watt."The post Video: Bill Dally on Scaling Performance in the Post-Dennard Era appeared first on insideHPC.

"MPI is generally a coarse-grained, as the parallelism where MPI is used would be higher up in the algorithm. Using MPI for an application requires a developer to think more about the individual servers and how to distribute parts of the application to these servers. The amount of work done by each of the connected servers would ideally be equal and equal to 1/Nth of the total work, where N is the number of servers."The post Coarse Grained Parallelism appeared first on insideHPC.

This week, the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) turns one decade old. ALCF is home to Mira, the world's fifth-fastest supercomputer, along with teams of experts that help researchers from all over the world perform complex simulations and calculations in almost every branch of science. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Argonne is highlighting 10 accomplishments since the facility opened its doors.The post ALCF Celebrates 10 Years of Leadership Computing appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from the 2015 Hot Chips Conference, Charles Zhang from Phytium presents: Mars - A 64-Core ARMv8 Processor. Formed in China in 2012, Phytium is a unique technology provider of HPC servers, focusing mainly on high performance general microprocessor, accelerator chip, reference board design and various servers design from blade, cluster, standard stack to HPC Server. "Optimized for HPC, the Mars chip features eight panels, each with eight “Xiaomi” cores. The panels share an L2 cache of 32 MB, two Directory Control Units and a routing cell for the internal mesh."The post Video: Mars – A 64-Core ARMv8 Processor appeared first on insideHPC.

The IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer Mira, housed at the Argonne national laboratory Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ACLF), is delivering new insights into the physics behind nuclear fusion, helping researchers to develop a new understanding of the electron behavior in edge plasma – a critical step to creating an efficient fusion reaction.The post Mira Supercomputer Shaping Fusion Plasma Research appeared first on insideHPC.

Today CoolIT Systems announced that it has successfully completed the second deployment of its Rack DCLC liquid cooling solution at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) in partnership with Huawei. "We are pleased to have migrated from a liquid cooled pilot project with CoolIT Systems to a full-scale rollout,” said Radoslaw Januszewski, IT Specialist at PSNC. “The pilot project proved to be very reliable, it met our efficiency goals, and provided a bonus performance boost with the processors very happy to be kept at a cool, consistent temperature as a result of liquid cooling’s effectiveness.”The post Poznan Launches Eagle Supercomputer with Liquid Cooling from CoolIT Systems appeared first on insideHPC.

Manufacturing is enjoying an economic and technological resurgence with the help of high performance computing. In this insideHPC webinar, you’ll learn how the power of CAE and simulation is transforming the industry with faster time to solution, better quality, and reduced costs.The post insideHPC Manufacturing Webinar appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) announced the selection of six industry projects for the advancement of energy technologies using high performance computing. Called the "hpc4energy incubator," this pilot program aims to innovate and accelerate the development of energy technology and boost U.S. economic competitiveness in the global marketplace by teaming industry with the scientific and computing resources at national laboratories.The post LLNL Teams with Industry to Advance Energy Technologies using HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

High Performance Computing for Energy (HPC4E) project officially launched this week with a kick-off meeting for partners at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Coordinated by BSC and running through November 2017, the project has been granted €2 million in funding by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.The post High Performance Computing for Energy Project Kicks off at BSC appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the OpenPOWER Foundation announced the election of John Zannos from Canonical as Chair and Calista Redmond from IBM as President of the OpenPOWER Foundation Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2016. Zannos and Redmond bring deep knowledge of the open technology development community and intimate familiarity with the Foundation’s core mission, with both playing key roles within the Foundation since 2014. The new leadership will continue to guide the proliferation of OpenPOWER-based technology solutions built on IBM’s POWER architecture in today’s datacenters.The post John Zannos to Chair OpenPOWER Foundation appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video from the DDN booth at SC15, Dr. Erik Deumens of the University of Florida describes why unpredictable and less standard architectures and system configurations are necessary to meet the agility, availability and responsiveness requirements to meet the mission of innovation and exploration. "The University of Florida’s Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research (ICBR) offers access to cutting-edge technologies designed to enable university faculty, staff and students, as well as research and commercial partners worldwide with the tools and resources needed to advance scientific research."The post Video: Storage Architecture for Innovation & Research at the University of Florida appeared first on insideHPC.

Oil and gas exploration is always a challenging endeavor, and with today's large risks and rewards, optimizing the process is of critical importance. A whole range of High Performance Computing (HPC) technologies need to be employed for fast and accurate decision making. This Intersect360 Research whitepaper, Seismic Processing Places High Demand on Storage, is an excellent summary of the challenges and solutions that are being address by storage solutions from Seagate.The post Seismic Processing Places High Demand on Storage appeared first on insideHPC.

Today DDN announced that its WOS 360 v2.0 object storage software was named a Visionary Product in the Professional Class Storage category at the fifteenth Annual Storage Visions Conference. The groundbreaking WOS enables organizations to build highly reliable, infinitely scalable and cost-efficient storage repositories to meet any unstructured data need and the most demanding storage requirements. With massively scalable storage technology that is able to outpace the performance requirements and growth of Enterprise Big Data, DDN continues to lead the market with revolutionary products that solve the end-to-end data lifecycle from cache and SSD to high performance file storage, cloud and archive.The post DDN WOS Object Storage Wins 2016 Storage Visions Award appeared first on insideHPC.

Researchers at UCLA have created the first detailed computer simulation model of an injured human leg--complete with spurting blood. The simulation is designed to make training for combat medics more realistic. "To create the simulator model, researchers combined detailed knowledge of anatomy with real-life CAT scans and MRIs to map out layers of a human leg--the bone, the soft tissue containing muscle and blood vessels and the skin surrounding everything. Then the design team applied physics and mathematical equations, fluid dynamics, and pre-determined rates of blood flow from specific veins and arteries to simulate blood loss for wounds of varying sizes and severity."The post UCLA Researchers Simulate Injured Human Leg appeared first on insideHPC.

Sugon is one of the top HPC vendors in China. With plans to expand operations in the West, the company is once again sponsoring the ISC 2016 conference. "Sugon, used to be called Dawning, rooted from the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICT), and was the first (and now largest) HPC local vendor in China. Since 1990, Sugon has been working on High Performance Computing, producing seven generations of HPC systems, such as Dawning I and Dawning 1000 to 6000. We have successfully supported more than 10,000 HPC projects."The post Interview: Sugon Looks to Grow New HPC Markets in the West appeared first on insideHPC.

This visualization from CSCS in Switzerland shows the world’s smallest integrated switch. "Researchers working under Juerg Leuthold, Professor of Photonics and Communications at ETH Zurich, have created the world’s smallest integrated optical switch. Applying a small voltage causes an atom to relocate, turning the switch on or off. ETH Professor Mathieu Luisier, who participated in this study, simulated the system using Piz Daint Supercomputer. The component operates at the level of individual atoms. "The post Simulating the World’s Smallest Integrated Switch appeared first on insideHPC.

The NSF has awarded $300K to NCSA to examine effective practices in industrial HPC. Led by Principal Investigator Merle Giles, the project will identify, document, and analyze effective practices in establishing public-private partnerships between High Performance Computing (HPC) centers and industry. With the market analysis firm IDC, the project will conduct a worldwide in-depth survey of 70-80 example partnerships of HPC centers of various sizes, in the US and elsewhere, that have been involved in partnerships with the private-sector.The post NCSA to Examine Effective Practices in Industrial HPC appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, Prof. Dr. Satoshi Matsuoka from the Tokyo Institute of Technology describes his role as Program Chair of ISC High Performance 2016. He talks about the transformation of the conference in recent years and admits: "This is one of the most enjoyable conferences I have ever been to." ISC High Performance is the landmark supercomputing, networking and storage event that attracts HPC enthusiasts from all across the globe. With 3,000 attendees, it is the largest HPC conference and exhibition in Europe. Regionally, the top five countries with the greatest number of ISC conference attendees are Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China. A growth in participation is projected for 2016, particularly from Asia.The post Video: Satoshi Matsuoka on the ISC 2016 Conference Program appeared first on insideHPC.

Today PASC16 announced a lineup of world-class keynote speakers for its third annual conference. The event will feature keynotes from academic and industry leaders with a special emphasis on high-performance computing, and simulation and data sciences. Building on the successful format of the last two years' conferences, PASC16 will offer an even broader and deeper selection of technical sessions, paper tracks, information stands, and presentations from industry and academia.The post PASC16 Announces Keynote Speakers appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the European Consortium announced a step towards Exascale computing with the ExaNeSt project. Funded by the Horizon 2020 initiative, ExaNeSt plans to build its first straw man prototype in 2016. The Consortium consists of twelve partners, each of which has expertise in a core technology needed for innovation to reach Exascale. ExaNeSt takes the sensible, integrated approach of co-designing the hardware and software, enabling the prototype to run real-life evaluations, facilitating its scalability and maturity into this decade and beyond.The post European ExaNeSt Project to Pave the Way to Exascale appeared first on insideHPC.

The speaker agenda has been published for the HPC-Based CFD for Offshore Renewable Energy Workshop. The two-day event takes place April 7-8 at Lancaster University in the UK.The post Agenda Published: HPC-Based CFD for Offshore Renewable Energy Workshop appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, Roger Goff from DDN describes how the company's storage solutions have evolved to address the changing demands and requirements of HPC from compute all the way throughout the entire data lifecycle. "Organizations leverage the power of DDN technology and the deep technical expertise of our team to capture, store, process, analyze, collaborate and distribute data, information and content at largest scale in the most efficient, reliable and cost effective manner. Our customers include many of the world’s leading financial services firms and banks, healthcare and life science organizations, manufacturing and energy companies, government and research facilities, and web and cloud service providers."The post Video: DDN’s End-to-End HPC Data Management appeared first on insideHPC.

"The human microbiome plays a role in processes as diverse as metabolism, immune function, and mental health. Yet despite the importance of this system, scientists are just beginning to uncover which microorganisms reside in and on our bodies and determine what functions they perform. The development of innovative technology and analytical methods has enabled researchers like Dr. Pollard to decode the complex interactions between our human cells and microbial brethren, and infer meaning from the staggering amounts of data 10 trillion organisms create."The post Video: Massive Data Sheds Light on Your Microbiome appeared first on insideHPC.

The Ohio Supercomputer Center is seeking an HPC Systems Engineer in our Job of the Week.The post Job of the Week: HPC Systems Engineer at Ohio Supercomputer Center appeared first on insideHPC.

Today European datacenter specialist DATA4 Group and Qarnot Computing announced a new type of distributed computing system that offers "greener and more efficient computing services." The system is based on Qarnot's Q.rad, a smart and connected digital heater. "Think of the device as the fusion of an electrical heater and a server. In the Q.rad model of computing, servers are placed in rooms that need heat. They are then networked together to form a physically distributed cloud computing resource."The post Server Radiators to Power Cloud from DATA4 Group & Qarnot Computing appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Bright Computing announced it has been awarded a grant of more than 1.5 million Euros by the European Commission under its Horizon 2020 program. The grant will be used for the Bright Beyond HPC program, which focuses on enhancing and scaling Bright's industry-leading management platform for advanced IT infrastructure, including high performance computing clusters, big data clusters, and OpenStack-based private clouds.The post Bright Computing Receives Horizon 2020 Grant for Advancing System Management Technology appeared first on insideHPC.

The summer of 2016 will see a raft of summer schools and other initiatives to train more people in high-performance computing, including efforts to increase the diversity of HPC specialists with a specific program aimed at ethnic minorities. But interested students need to get their applications in now.The post Apply Now for Supercomputing Summer School appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, researchers describe how the Jetstream project at Indiana University. Jetstream is a user-friendly cloud environment designed to give researchers access to interactive computing and data analysis resources on demand, whenever and wherever they want to analyze their data. It will provide a library of virtual machines designed to do discipline specific scientific analysis. Software creators and researchers will also be able to create their own customized virtual machines or their own private computing system within Jetstream.The post Video: Jetstream to Make HPC a Breeze for Researchers appeared first on insideHPC.

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the Top Technology Stories for High Performance Computing in 2015. "From 3D XPoint memory to Co-Design Architecture and NVM Express, these new approaches are poised to have a significant impact on supercomputing in the near future." We also take a look at the most-shared stories from 2015.The post Radio Free HPC Looks at the Top HPC Tech Stories from 2015 appeared first on insideHPC.

The National Academy of Sciences is presenting its 2016 Public Welfare Medal to actor, director, writer, and science communicator Alan Alda in recognition of his "extraordinary application of the skills honed as an actor to communicating science on television and stage, and by teaching scientists innovative techniques that allow them to tell their stories to the public." Alda, who was the keynote speaker at SC15, will receive the award on May 1 during the Academy's 153nd annual meeting.The post Alan Alda to Receive Public Welfare Medal from National Academy of Sciences appeared first on insideHPC.

A new major collaborative project is set to transform the UK pharmaceutical industry by enabling the manufacturing processes of the innovative medicines of the future to be designed digitally. The STFC Hartree Centre is a partner in the £20.4m ADDoPT (Advanced Digital Design of Pharmaceutical Therapeutics) project, which involves major pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb.The post Hartree Centre Collaborates to Transform UK Pharmaceutical Development appeared first on insideHPC.

As multi-socket, then multi-core systems have become the standard, the Message Passing Interface (MPI) has become one of the most popular programming models for applications that can run in parallel using many sockets and cores. Shared memory programming interfaces, such as OpenMP, have allowed developers to take advantage of systems that combine many individual servers and shared memory within the server itself. However, two different programming models have been used at the same time. The MPI 3.0 standard allows for a new MPI interprocess shared memory extension (MPI SHM).The post Shared Memory and MPI 3.0 appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Compute Canada and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) announced a collaboration to build a scalable national platform for research data management and discovery. The partnership joins information management expertise from the CARL Portage Network with information technology expertise from Compute Canada to develop services that researchers need to respond to the demands of data-intensive research and to comply with funding bodies’ data sharing policies.The post Compute Canada Collaborates on National Research Data Platform appeared first on insideHPC.

In this week's industry Perspective, Katie Garrison of One Stop Systems explains how GPUltima allows HPC professionals to create a highly dense compute platform that delivers a petaflop of performance at greatly reduced cost and space requirements.compute power needed to quickly process the amount of data generated in intensive applications.The post The GPUltima: Up to a Petaflop of Networked GPUs in a Single Rack appeared first on insideHPC.

The Call for Submissions is open for the upcoming GPU Programming Hackathon at University of Delaware (UDEL). The event takes place from May 2-6, 2016 at UDEL in Newark, Delaware.The post Call for Submissions: GPU Hackathon at the University of Delaware appeared first on insideHPC.

The U.S Department of Energy has awarded a total of 80 million processor hours on Titan supercomputer to an astrophysical project based at the DOE's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). The grants will enable researchers to study the dynamics of magnetic fields in the high-energy density plasmas that lasers create. Such plasmas can closely approximate those that occur in some astrophysical objects.The post Princeton Plasma Physics Lab Wins 80 Million Processor Hours on Titan Supercomputer appeared first on insideHPC.

Today ANSYS announced that engineers across disciplines – from structures to fluids to electromagnetics to systems – will realize step-change improvements in the way they develop products using the newly released ANSYS 17.0. This next generation of ANSYS industry-leading engineering simulation solutions set the scene for the next quantum leaps in product development, enabling unprecedented advancements across an array of industry initiatives from smart devices to autonomous vehicles to more energy-efficient machines. The most feature-rich release in the company's 45-year history, available today, delivers 10x improvements to product development productivity, insight and performance.The post ANSYS Release 17.0 Provides 10X Performance Improvement appeared first on insideHPC.

"Upgrading legacy HPC systems relies as much on the requirements of the user base as it does on the budget of the institution buying the system. There is a gamut of technology and deployment methods to choose from, and the picture is further complicated by infrastructure such as cooling equipment, storage, networking – all of which must fit into the available space. However, in most cases it is the requirements of the codes and applications being run on the system that ultimately define choice of architecture when upgrading a legacy system. In the most extreme cases, these requirements can restrict the available technology, effectively locking a HPC center into a single technology, or restricting the application of new architectures because of the added complexity associated with code modernization, or porting existing codes to new technology platforms."The post Long Live the King – The Complicated Business of Upgrading Legacy HPC Systems appeared first on insideHPC.

Apexx5_hero_web_smallToday BOXX Technologies introduced the redesigned APEXX 5, the "world’s most advanced professional workstation." Built to accommodate demanding engineering, architectural, VFX, and animation workflows, the newly upgraded and highly configurable APEXX 5 is designed to maximize I/O expandability with up to 5 dual-width GPUs with a sync card, a single-width GPU, or any combination of seven, full-length expansion cards while reaching new levels of rendering and simulation performance.The post GPUs & Liquid-Cooling Speed APEXX 5 Advanced Computer Workstation appeared first on insideHPC.

Computational scientists now have the opportunity to apply for the upcoming Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing (ATPESC), to take place from July 31-August 12, 2016. "With the challenges posed by the architecture and software environments of today’s most powerful supercomputers, and even greater complexity on the horizon from next-generation and exascale systems, there is a critical need for specialized, in-depth training for the computational scientists poised to facilitate breakthrough science and engineering using these amazing resources. This program provides intensive hands-on training on the key skills, approaches and tools to design, implement, and execute computational science and engineering applications on current supercomputers and the HPC systems of the future. As a bridge to that future, this two-week program to be held at the Pheasant Run Resort in suburban Chicago fills many gaps that exist in the training computational scientists typically receive through formal education or shorter courses."The post Apply Now for Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing appeared first on insideHPC.

siemensToday Siemens AG in Germany announced plans Monday to acquire HPC software maker CD-adapco in a stock purchase agreement valued at $970 million. "As part of its Vision 2020, Siemens is acquiring CD-adapco and sharpening its focus on growth in digital business and expanding its portfolio in the area of industry software," said Siemens managing board member Klaus Helmrich.The post Siemens to Acquire CD-adapco appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Bright Computing announced that it has collaborated with BitNet in Turkey to provide an infrastructure management solution to FNSS. As is a leading manufacturer and supplier of tracked and wheeled armored combat vehicles, FNSS provides weapon systems for the Turkish and Allied Armed Forces.The post Bright Computing & BitNet Manage Simulation Infrastructure at FNSS in Turkey appeared first on insideHPC.

The ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC16) Training kicked off in Beijing on January 26. First initiated and organized in China, ASC16 has gained support from experts and technology organizations in US, Europe, and Asia. With a goal to inspire more innovative applications in various fields, it has attracted more and more talent to supercomputing and has greatly promoted communications in the supercomputing community throughout the world. Within 5 years, the ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge has become the world’s largest supercomputing hackathon.The post 175 Teams to Compete in ASC16 Student Supercomputer Challenge appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Centerprise International (Ci) in the UK announced a collaboration with E4 Computer Engineering to develop next-generation datacenter technologies for HPC. "This is an exciting development for both companies, as it combines the specialist knowledge of E4 in the field of high performance computing with our considerable experience in building quality, customized hardware solutions and our expansive reach in the UK IT channel," said Jeremy Nash, Centerprise Sales Director."The post E4 Computer Engineering Collaborates with Ci on HPC Technologies appeared first on insideHPC.

Today SGI Japan announced that the Nagaoka University of Technology has selected the SGI UV 300, SGI UV 30EX and SGI Rackable servers and SGI InfiniteStorage 5600 for its next education and research integrated high-performance computing system. With a tenfold performance increase over the previous system, the new supercomputer will will start operation on March 1, 2016.The post SGI to Deliver Advanced Data Processing for Nagaoka University of Technology appeared first on insideHPC.

In this video, engineers move the NERSC Edison Supercomputer from Oakland to Berkeley. The one week long move is condensed into :41 seconds in this time lapse video, shot during the entire process. Edison is a Cray XC30, with a peak performance of 2.57 petaflops/sec, 133,824 compute cores, 357 terabytes of memory, and 7.56 petabytes of disk.The post Time-lapse Video: Edison Supercomputer Moves to Berkeley appeared first on insideHPC.

Today the STFC Hartree Centre in the U.K. announced that Alison Kennedy will be joining the centre as its new Director at the end of March 2016. As Director, Alison will drive the continued growth and development of the Hartree Centre. This follows the UK Government and IBM’s recent five year investment to enable UK industry to exploit the opportunities presented by big data and cognitive computing technologies.The post Alison Kennedy Named Hartree Centre Director appeared first on insideHPC.

India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has developed an affordable supercomputer for universities conducting high-end research. Already deployed at 25 institutions, the Param Shavak is a GPU-accelerated desktop machine that sports over 2 Teraflops of performance.The post C-DAC Deploys 25 Param Shavak Desktop Supercomputers Across India appeared first on insideHPC.

EuroMPI has issued its Call for Submissions. The aim of this conference is to bring together all of the stakeholders involved in developments and applications related to the Message Passing Interface (MPI). As the preeminent meeting for users, developers and researchers to interact and discuss new developments and applications of message-passing parallel computing, the meeting takes place Sept. 25-28 in Edinburgh.The post Call for Submissions: EuroMPI in Edinburgh appeared first on insideHPC.

Today Cray announced a $36 million contract to upgrade and expand the Cray XC supercomputers and Cray Sonexion storage system at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). When the project is completed, the enhanced systems will allow the world-class numerical weather prediction and research center to continue to drive improvements in its highly-complex models to provide more accurate weather forecasts.The post ECMWF to Upgrade Cray XC Supercomputers for Weather Forecasting appeared first on insideHPC.