At the SC09 supercomputer conference in Oregon today, Intel’s CTO Justin Ratner talked up the 3D web (using Intel’s Xenon and Larrabie GPUs). Come up with a killer application or the business will stagnate, he argued. For examples he used Second Life and interactive clothing design, both using open and interoperable tools utilizing the grid.
Also this week:
- Intel is tweaking its future eight-core Beckton Nehalem EX processors , making a special version aimed just at HPC customers. Intel also announced a partnership with NEC to build Xeon based computers, says The Reg. NEC already uses Intel’s Xeon and Itanium processors for its Express5800 servers and fault-tolerant machines.
- The 2009 Annual HPCwire Readers’ Choice Awards were announced with two new categories were introduced – HPC in the Cloud, and Green Computing. Awards were also given for HPC applications in life sciences, manufacturing and financial services, as well as for HPC storage, visualization, interconnects and more. Here’s the final list of the 2009 award recipients.
- Monday IBM announced that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has selected an IBM System x iDataPlex server to run the Lab’s program to explore how cloud computing can be used to advance scientific discovery. The LBNL program is being funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the Department of Energy and will allow scientists to accelerate discoveries in energy efficiency, climate change and genomics. According to the August 2009 Green500 list, the iDatPlex system is one of the most energy efficient computers in the world.
Infinera, Internet2, Juniper Networks and Level 3 demonstrated 100 Gbps data transport between Seattle and the SC09 show floor in Portland. The 100 Gbps of test data was sent over Level 3 and Internet2’s fiber-optic network.
- IBM announced the world’s largest private cloud computing environment for business analytics. Known as Blue Insight, the cloud will provide new levels of insight for 200,000 IBM sales teams and developers and will launch initially with more than a petabyte (1,000,000 gigabytes) of data and gathers information from nearly 100 different information warehouses and data stores.
- A Fujitsu-built 10 petaflops machine was to be installed at the Rikagaku Kenkyusho (Riken) research lab in Kobe, Japan, and was expected to be operational in early 2012. But the Japanese government may cancel the Keisuko project, reports The Register.
- nVidia announced the first Fermi GPU products at SC09. A Dell or HP workstation can house two of these cards, providing well over a teraflop. NVIDIA quotes typical power draw at 190W, with a maximum of 225W. Tesla server boards contain four Fermi GPUs, and provide between 2.1 and 2.5 teraflops of DP — in a 1U box.
- The National Center for Supercomputing Applications has a guide to GPU computing. GPUs from ATI, nvidia, Intel and others can perform 100x faster and use less power than even fastest general purpose processors.
Computers capable of mimicking the human brain’s power and efficiency could be just 10 years off, according to IBM researchers. Last year, IBM and five universities were awarded a DARPA contract to work on a cognitive computing project aimed at eventually achieving that goal.
More coverage is available at SC09, HPC Wire, The Register and Google News.
