SuperComputing 2005 runs November 12-18th, in Seattle. Check out the Schedule, Programs, Exhibits, Speakers, Tutorials, Initiatives, BOFs and press releases for interesting news.
Here are some profiles of Supercomputing 2005 exhibitors. HPC Wire and Grid Today have news.
Supercomputing pushes the boundaries of high performance storage, analytics, and networking. The technology exhibited at SC has a way of showing up on your desktop in ten years. Or sooner.
Big Blue had half of the top 10 supercomputers in the semiannual Top500 list, including the top three. The company’s BlueGene/L, knocked off NEC’s Earth Simulator in November 2004. Livermore’s BlueGene may help design weapons like the Shoulder Mounted Assault Weapon which uses a thermobaric mixture of unparalleled killing power.
BlueGene can deliver more than 280.6 teraflops of Bush doctrine, with a theoretical maximum performance in excess of 367 teraflops. No other supercomputer has broken the 100 teraflops barrier. NEC’s Earth Simulator machine, with a peak performance of 35.86 teraflops, topped five consecutive lists. Now that machine has slipped to the number seven position.
SCinet (architecture), the fiber network built on site, ties it all together. Mintera will supply the 40 Gigabits per second network for SCinet. The network features a high-performance production-quality network, an Open InfiniBand (OpenIB) Network and an extremely high performance experimental network, Xnet, the development showcase at SC.
The SCinet InfiniBand cluster will host over 6TFlops of supercomputing performance and have direct access to storage solutions hosted by the StorCloud initiative. StorCloud will combine state of the art storage and application demonstrations.
Industry vendors and carriers donate much of the equipment and services needed to build the LAN and WAN infrastructure. Planning begins more than a year in advance of each SC conference and culminates with a high-intensity installation just seven days before the conference begins.
Internet2, in conjunction with SCinet, will provide a “weather map” showing current utilization on all SCinet external links, based on the technology used for the Abilene NOC weather map, and developed by the Abilene NOC at Indiana University.
Internet2 recently demonstrated production use of IPv6 multicast networking. It allows a single source to provide content to an unlimited number of receivers without duplicating bandwidth and also allows higher bandwidth applications, such as the 40 mega-bit-per-second, better than DVD-quality video.
In collaboration with Trapeze Networks, SCinet will deploy IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g wireless networks within the Washington State Convention and Trade Center (WSCTC). These wireless networks are part of the production SCinet network, providing access to the Internet, and many other national and agency networks. The wireless network will be provided on the exhibit floor, in the Education Program areas, the ballroom and meeting rooms, and in many common areas within the WSCTC.
SCinet provides the wireless networks for use by all exhibitors and attendees at no charge. SCinet will control the entire 2.4GHz and 5.2GHz frequency radio spectrum (2.412GHz-2.462GHz) and (5.15GHz to 5.35GHz) within the WSCTC. The SCinet wireless network is a best effort network.
Xnet (eXtreme Net) provides a venue to showcase bleeding-edge, developmental networking technologies and experimental networking applications. Xnet debuted in Portland, OR at SC99, where Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology was used in the implementation of OC-48 SONET rings on the conference show floor. In 2004, Xnet used advanced optical switching and new transport technologies. Documentation for Xnet 2005 is not yet available.
Aggregate WAN transport delivered to the industry and research exhibitors is expected to exceed 400 billion bits/second (Gbps) for SC|05. Approximately 40 to 45 10 Gbps links will arrive on the SC|05 show floor, with 15 to 18 10 Gbps links to be used simultaneously by some Bandwidth Challenge participants.
Massively parallel, grid technogy, enabled by tools like Grid Toolkit 4.0, could make open source software available on computing grids and is being developed by the Globus Alliance and other organizations world-wide.
There are dozens of Grid projects. They include private, public, regional and global networks. The Global Grid Forum and CERN’s GridCafe explain the principle while Globus World investigates how the grid will change applications.
NEPTUNE is a planned Regional Cabled Observatory for the West Coast. The Canadian (VENUS) and US (MARS) observatory testbeds are being built now.
The Neptune Project will monitor the seabed off the West Coast for earthquakes and tsunamis.
The OptIPuter will utilize switchable fiber and ultra large, high resolution data sets. The Laboratory for the Ocean Observatory Knowledge INtegration Grid (LOOKING) will link, via experimental wireless, optical networks, and Grid technology, a series of facilities located off the Pacific coasts of Mexico, the United States, and Canada.
Google is the new super-power. Their ad-driven financial success has propelled its stock market value to $110 billion, more than the combined value of Disney, Ford, General Motors, Amazon.com and the media companies that own the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. It may be more money than the military-industrial complex wastes on “black hole” projects the country can no longer afford.
Google is quietly working with Craig Venter on genetic and biological research. Sergey Brin says searching all of the world’s information includes “Googling Your Genes.”
Who’s your daddy? Why it’s Leisure Suit Larry!
Will grid research be combined with work by the Open Source Development Lab on mobile platforms?
CompAmerica’s Orca 9098 (right) claims to be the “most powerful laptop on Earth” with a 3.8 GHz P4, dual hard drives, and a 17-inch display with a starting price of $2,149.
This month, the X-Box 360 will deliver an order of magnitude more performance. For everyone. Sony on deck.
