RadioFreeHPC

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team takes a look at daunting performance targets for the DOE's CORAL-2 RFP for Exascale Computers. "So, 1.5 million TeraFlops divided by 7.8 is how many individual accelerators you need, and that's 192,307, which by the way looks like a prime number. Now, multiply that by 300 watts per accelerator, and it is clear we are going to need something all-new to get where we want to go." The Request for Proposals is designed to get bids from vendors to build two and (potentially) three new exascale supercomputers. Each system is expected to cost between $400 – $600 million. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the new interactive USA Supercomputing Map from Hyperion Research.  "The mapped sites include government, academic and industrial HPC data centers, along with HPC vendors. This powerful tool can be used to identify the economic impact of HPC in a user-defined area (state, Congressional district, et al.) or for the United States as a whole, or to understand where HPC jobs are located, as well as who the Congressional district representatives are." As part of the discussion, Rich recaps Hyperion's recent HPC User Forum in Tucson. The event featured an extended session on Quantum Computing with presentations by D-Wave Systems, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NIST, and Rigetti Computing. You can watch them all right here on insideHPC. After that, we do our Catch of the Week. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the new Department of Energy's RFP for Exascale Computers. Called CORAL-2, this Request for Proposal is for up to $1.8 billion and is completely separate from the $320 million allocated for the Exascale Computing Project in the FY 2018 budget. Those funds are mostly focused at application development and software technology for an exascale software stack. These new systems represent the next generation in supercomputing and will be critical tools both for our nation’s scientists and for U.S. industry,” Secretary Perry said.  “They will help ensure America’s continued leadership in the vital area of high performance computing, which is an essential element of our national security, prosperity, and competitiveness as a nation.”The RFP is issued under the CORAL umbrella (Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Livermore). CORAL1 has already procured the following systems: Aurora at Argonne National Lab (target completion date in 2021)Summit at ORNL (2018 to 2023 timeframe)Sierra at LLNL (2018 to 2023 timeframe)This RFP (CORAL2) is designed to get bids from vendors to build two and (potentially) three new exascale supercomputers. Each system is expected to cost between $400 – $600 million. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses technology changes and how senior citizens work with social media. Henry's Mom Binnie Coppersmith is once again our guest on the show, which is monumental since no one has ever offered to come back before.Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at Facebook's testimony before Congress. “Dan Olds and Henry Newman are the only guys on deck today, Rich and Shahin are either traveling or doing something useless. However, this episode is ground breaking. Henry and Dan agree on everything ranging from the Facebook security “scandal” to the implications of GDPR. It’s a shocking and stunning turn of events." We should have a full crew next week and it’s hard to believe that Dan and Henry will agree yet again, so the universe will be back in order.” Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team discusses technology changes in the last 50 years of the Travel Agencies. Henry's Mom Binnie Coppersmith is once again our guest on the show, which is monumental since no one has ever offered to come back before.Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team reviews the highlights of the GPU Technology Conference. From Rich's perspective, the key HPC announcement centered around new NVIDIA DGX-2 supercomputer with the NVSwitch interconnect. The rapid growth in deep learning workloads has driven the need for a faster and more scalable interconnect, as PCIe bandwidth increasingly becomes the bottleneck at the multi-GPU system level. NVLink is a great advance to enable eight GPUs in a single server, and accelerate performance beyond PCIe. But taking deep learning performance to the next level will require a GPU fabric that enables more GPUs in a single server, and full-bandwidth connectivity between them. NVIDIA NVSwitch is the first on-node switch architecture to support 16 fully-connected GPUs in a single server node and drive simultaneous communication between all eight GPU pairs at an incredible 300 GB/s each. These 16 GPUs can be used as a single large-scale accelerator with 0.5 Terabytes of unified memory space and 2 petaFLOPS of deep learning compute power.”For more details on DGX-2, check out our insideHPC interview with NVIDIA's Marc Hamilton.   Henry Newman and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat After that, we do our Catch of the Week. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team goes off the supercomputing rails a bit with a discussion on digital immortality. A new company called Nectome will reportedly archive your mind for future uploading to a machine. We’re building the next generation of tools to preserve the connectome. Our ultimate ambition is to keep your memories intact for the future.While the price of $10K seems reasonable enough, they do have to kill you to complete the process. After that, we do our Catch of the Week.  Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the big three technologies of the day on the Hype curve: Machine Learning. The GTC conference is coming up, and we are seeing a continuing series of announcements like the high density deep learning server from Lamda Labs.Cryptocurrency. GPUs are in short supply as crypto miners continue to buy mass quantities of consumer devices.Quantum Computing. This week Google unveiled their 72-Qbit Bristlecone Quantum Chip, which they claim has them on the road to Quantum Supremacy. At the same time, quantum seems to be going mainstream, as evidenced by a panel discussion this week at SXSW. You can listen to the full recording of the session right here on insideHPC.[caption id="attachment_69839" align="alignright" width="300"] Quantum Computing was the focus of a panel discussion at SXSW this week. From left: Bo Ewald (D-Wave Systems) Antia Lamas-Linares (TACC) Patricia Baumhart (D-Wave Systems) Jerry Chow (IBM) and Andrew Fursman 1Qbit.[/caption] After that, we do our Catch of the Week. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the European Processor Initiative, an effort to design a build an exascale computer based around European technology. "According to an interview in Primeur Magazine with EPI project coordinator Philippe Notton from Atos, the project involves not only a processor, but an accelerator as well. Will it be based on ARM, OpenPOWER, or something else like RISC-V? We will have to wait and see." After that, we do our Catch of the Week. Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed