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@HPCpodcast-75: Rick Stevens, Mike Papka – Argonne National Lab (ANL)

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As SC23 approaches, we were fortunate to catch up with Rick Stevens and Mike Papka of Argonne National Lab for a wide ranging discussion.  In addition to an update on the Aurora supercomputer and TOP500, we also discuss the need and challenged of building a national exascale capability, developing teams and bench strength, the risks and opportunities of AI for science and society, the trend towards integrated research infrastructure (IRI), and what’s next for the exascale initiative. We’d like to encourage you to also listen to episodes 15 and 16 of this podcast where we discuss AI in science with prof. Stevens.

Rick Stevens is Argonne’s Associate Laboratory Director for the Computing, Environment and Life Sciences (CELS) Directorate and an Argonne Distinguished Fellow. He is also a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. He was previously leader of Exascale Computing Initiative at Argonne.

Michael Papka is a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory where he is also deputy associate laboratory director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences (CELS) and division director of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF).

 

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@HPCpodcast-74: Karl Freund, AI Chips

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Karl Freund, founder and principal analyst at Cambrian-AI Research joins us to discuss the, well, “Cambrian explosion” that we are witnessing in AI chips, the general state of the AI semiconductor market, and the competitive landscape in deep learning, inference, and software infrastructure in support of AI. Karl has a deep background in HPC and AI, having served in executive roles at Cray, IBM, AMD, and Calxeda, a pioneer of Arm-based system-on-chip (SoC) for servers. Karl is a frequent contributor to Forbes.

 

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@HPCpodcast-73: Peter Ungaro – Industry View

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In this episode of Industry View, we are delighted to have a rare opportunity to catch up with none other than Pete Ungaro, long time luminary and admired leader in HPC/AI. Mr. Ungaro is a globally recognized technology executive, among the “40 under 40” by Corporate Leader Magazine in 2008, and CEO of the year by Seattle Business Monthly for the year 2006. He was most recently SVP/GM of High Performance Computing (HPC), Mission Critical Systems (MCS), and HPE Labs at HPE. Previously, he was president and CEO of Cray Inc. until its acquisition by HPE. Prior to joining Cray in 2003, Mr. Ungaro served as Vice President of Worldwide Deep Computing Sales for IBM.

In this episode of Industry View, we cover the Cray journey as it became the clear winner in exascale systems, the HPE acquisition, the challenges of delivering a new extreme-scale system during COVID, a look at HPC software, storage, power and cooling, and quantum computing, the opportunities and challenges of AI, and the geopolitics of high tech.

 

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HPC News Bytes – 20231030

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– SC23 Conference “all in” with Streaming
– Intel Financials, On-track with Fab, Progress in AI
– Quantum Computing Round-up, Still Early Days
– Oxide Computer All-Custom Cloud Computer

 

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@HPCpodcast-72: Vanessa Sochat and Alan Sill – HPC.social Community

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Vanessa Sochat and Alan Sill ,the creators of the HPC.social project join us as we discuss the broad HPC/AI community and their efforts to enable it digitally through a broad multi-channel platform that includs Slack, Discord, Mastodon, GitHub, a jobs board, a community map, and the effort’s main site HPC.social.

The HPC community has grown but continues to have a very special tight-knit feel to it, as if everyone knows everyone else. While ISC, SC, and other conferences physically bring HPC (and increasingly AI) practitioners together, the digital community has been scattered and evolving. The work led by Vanessa and Alan puts a welcome focus on this digital aspect of the HPC community.

Vanessa is a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. She is a software engineer working with the converged computing team mapping out the space between cloud and HPC, both technologically and culturally. Previously, she worked in research computing at Stanford where she earned a PhD in biomedical informatics, and she was a researcher at Duke University where she earned a degree in psychology and neuroscience. Alan is managing director of the High Performance Computing Center at Texas Tech where he has also been a professor of physics and where he has been for 31 years. He is also co-director of The National Science Foundation’s Cloud and Autonomic Computing Center and is president of the Open Grid Forum. Alan has an extensive background in distributed and grid computing.

 

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@HPCpodcast-71: Alain Andreoli – Industry View

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We are starting a new feature, looking at HPC, AI, and other advanced technologies through the lens of industry leaders. In this episode, we have the pleasure of a very lively conversation with Alain Andreoli, a longtime luminary of HPC and IT. Mr. Andreoli was with HPE for more than 7 year where he served as group president and EVP of the Hybrid IT Group, helping shape HPE’s strategy for HPC including the acquisition of SGI in 2017. Earlier he was at Sun Microsystems where he was president of the European operations. He was also a senior executive at Ntt, Oracle, and Texas Instruments.

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@HPCpodcast-70: Paul Messina – Journey to Exascale

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From the early days of supercomputing through the stellar success of the Exascale Project, few HPC luminaries have played such an integral and leadership role in supercomputing as  Dr. Paul Messina.  So as we look at the annual observance of the Exascale Day on October eighteenth, we were delighted to get a chance to discuss the journey to Exascale with someone who has led and overseen 10 orders of magnitude in performance improvement.  Dr. Messina’s distinguished career dates back to the early 70s. After earning his PhD at the University Of Cincinnati, Paul joined Argonne National Lab in 1973.  He was involved in building programming language for the original Cray 1. At CalTech, he was the director of the Center for Advanced Computing Research. In 1998 to 2000 he led the DOE-NNSA Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) program which was at the heart of DOE’s Science Based Stockpile Stewardship strategy and a significant catalyst for supercomputing innovation. Dr. Messina was also the first director of the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) starting from 2015 until late 2017.

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HPC News Bytes – 20231002

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– AMD’s Lisa Su at the Code Conference Discusses Generative AI, MI300, Open Strategy
– EUV armed Intel-4 Fab in Ireland Starts Volume Production
– AI Impact on Jobs, Case in the Legal Field
– Supercomputing Conference coming: SC23, Denver, Nov 12-17


 

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HPC News Bytes – 20230925

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– Intel Gaudi2, Collaboration with Dell, Satability AI
– Samba Nova SN40L, LLMs
– Air Force Research Lab 12 PFlop System
– Small Modular nuclear Reactors (SMRs)
– CHIPS Act: DOD $238m award for Microelectronics Commons Regional Innovation Hubs

 

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@HPCpodcast-69: David Barkai author of Unmatched: 50 Years of Supercomputing

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Special guest David Barkai discusses his new book, Unmatched: 50 Years of Supercomputing. Dr. Barkai is a 50 year veteran of the HPC community whose new book chronicles the extraordinary progress of supercomputing over the past half century, and how HPC emerged as a “powerful demonstration of our relentless drive to understand and shape the world around us.” David entered HPC shortly after receiving a PhD in theoretical physics and has focused on relationships between applications and architectures.  He served at several technology companies during their heydays such as Control Data, Floating Point Systems, Cray Research, SGI, and others along with stints at NASA Ames and Intel. Unmatched the book is broken up into five decade-long epochs defined by the system architectural themes of “big iron” vector processors, multiprocessors, microprocessor, clusters, and accelerators and cloud computing.  The final part of the book examines key issues of HPC and discusses where it might all be headed. We were delighted to host David and have the excellent conversation that ensued. Join us.

 

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@HPCpodcast-68: Mike McGrath of Red Hat on Linux Controversy

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A change in distribution policy by Red Hat started the biggest open source controversy in years. We continue our coverage of this topic with Mike McGrath, whose two blogs from Red Hat in late June announced the company’s new policy. Mike is Vice President of Core Platforms at Red Hat where he leads the development of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and related platforms. He has been at Red Hat for nearly seventeen years and in the IT industry since 2004.

Our coverage started with special guest Joe Landman, and then with Greg Kurtzer of CIQ. Be sure to listen to all three episodes to get a full perspective on the various issues and nuances, and there are a few, including how the Open Source community has changed, how the software supply chain in Open Source has worked and why it is now a point of contention, and in what happened to Free Open Source Software (FOSS).

 

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HPC News Bytes – 20230904

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– Google Cloud with TPU v5e and  Nvidia H100
– Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystem
– ETH’s Torsten Hoefler now also CSCS Chief Architect for Machine Learning
– @HPCpodcast: Greg Kurtzer on Red Hat and the RHEL Source Code Controversy

 

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@HPCpodcast-67: Greg Kurtzer of CIQ on Linux Controversy, OELA

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The Linux open source controversy was kicked off about two months ago when Red Hat announced it was changing access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code. This has thrown the open source community into a major disruption. We discussed this in a previous episode with our special guest Joe Landman. We also spoke with Greg Kurtzer of CIQ and Mike McGrath of Red Hat to get their perspectives.

This episode is our conversation with Greg Kurtzer, founder and chief executive officer of CIQ. He’s a 20+ year veteran in Linux open source and HPC. His focus has been on designing scalable architectures for performance-intensive computing while working for the US Department of Energy and holding a joint appointment to UC Berkeley. Greg has led several large open source projects such as CENTOS Linux and its successor Rocky Linux. Related to this conversation is a new industry alliance led by CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE called the Open Enterprise Linux Association. Stay tuned for an in-depth discussion with Mike McGrath of Red Hat.

 

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HPC News Bytes – 20230828

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– Gartner predicts accelerated growth for CDI
– MPI ABI to simplify parallel apps
– AMD buys AI software Mipsology, pointing to where chip companies will seek use cases and growth
– HPC in the Cloud gets “recycled”

 

HPC News Bytes – 20230821

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– Intel calls off Tower Deal
– HotChips Conference Preview
– GPU Shortage as AI Leadership Grows in Importance Globally
– Samsung 4nm Chip Factory in Texas with Groq as 1st customer Projected for 2nd Half of 2024

 

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HPC News Bytes – 20230814

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– Linux Wars continue: Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form Open Enterprise Linux Association
– China’s tech companies place $5 billion of orders on US chips
– Intel improves hardware for on-chip AVX (or APX) vector instructions
– 2023 Gordon Bell Prize Finalists also point to TOP500

 

HPC News Bytes – 20230807

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– Domain Specific Architecture (DSA) – McKinsey Report
– Intel Expands in Oregon, its biggest site
– Photons are coming: PCIe over optical
– Oak Ridge QC Hat Trick: Singlet Fusion simulation of linear H4 molecule w Quantinuum

 

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@HPCpodcast-66: Argonne AI Testbed w Venkat Vishwanath

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The Cambrian explosion of AI chips has made it hard to tell what chip is good for what. Venkat Vishwanath, Data Science Team Lead at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), and a Gordon Bell finalist, joins us to discuss the ALCF AI Testbed. Currently working with systems such as Cerebras, Graphcore, SambaNova, Habana, Groq, Untether, Tenstorrent, Esperanto, and others, the Testbed evaluates accelerators from a usability and performance standpoint.

 

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Technopolitics, a Technology Lens to Guide Policy – OrionX Download Podcast

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Why is technopolitics a good lens? Technology has always had a big impact on geopolitics and global competitiveness. What’s special now?

A major topic that we’ve wanted to cover for a few years is technopolitics. The impact of technology on national competitiveness, and therefore on policy and supply chain, is growing. We see that in the global gold-rush frenzy towards advanced technologies: exascale supercomputers, quantum computing, AI, space tech, biotech, robotics,  and so on. The first question is: what’s different now? Over the course of history, technology has always had a big impact on geopolitics, on human condition, on global competitiveness. So what’s special now? Join us!

 

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HPC News Bytes – 20230724

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– Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC)
– Meta Microsoft Llama 2 Open Source AI
– NTT Tokyo Tech 300 GHz 6G
– 64-way Cerebras CG-1 system with G42 Group
– NREL grid optimization with quantum tech and Atom Computing

 

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Mktg_Podcast-29: Social Media Wars, Crude Data, D2C

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Cartoon of the weak is about bad marketing and so we have to discuss the role of marketing and the importance of alignment between CMO and CEO, then it’s the unfolding social media wars with Meta’s new Threads app and Twitter, and the complications that can arise from Direct to Consumer (DTC) marketing. We end with Data-is-Oil and how crude data, like crude oil, must be refined and out to use before it has high value at smaller volume.

 

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@HPCpodcast-65: Linux Wars w Joe Landman

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Dr. Joe Landman joins us to discuss how the open source OS community has found itself in the middle of the kind of Linux wars that can change the industry. The recent firestorm in the Linux world erupted when Red Hat changed the access mechanism and distribution rights of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We unpack what happened, who it affects, and how the landscape might change. Joe has been a business and technology leader, a hands-on engineer and architect, and a data analyst and researcher. A computational physicist by training he has was one of the early pioneers of custom and accelerated systems.  Read his blog on this and other HPC software here.

 

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HPC News Bytes – 20230710

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New in the @HPCpodcast, a weekly news show, 3-5 min, on important industry news.
– LLNL El Capitan
– LLNL Director Kim Budil named as one of the Most Creative People in Business for 2023 by Fast Company
– Inflection AI’s 22k GPU system
– NYS DFS AI
– Intel & Nvidia collaborate on Confidential Computing
– Photonics News
– Linux Wars

 

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@HPCpodcast-64: RISC-V CTO Mark Himelstein

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Mark Himelstein, CTO of RISC-V joins us to discuss the latest developments with the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) and its growing community and footprint. Topics include HPC type use cases from sensor to supercomputer, achieving customization without loss of compatibility, AI and its impact on chips and systems, and the question on everyone’s mind: when do we see RISC-V in servers and supercomputers!

You may also be interested in Shahin’s conversation with Mark in August 2020 and see how things have evolved.

 

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@HPCpodcast-62: Exascale Software with Sunita Chandrasekaran

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University of Delaware Professor Sunita Chandrasekaran joins us to discuss exascale software, directive based parallel programming, the emergence of research software engineering as a career, what AI will mean for the industry, and the importance of communication and community among teams.

This episode is sponsored by Lenovo.

 

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@HPCpodcast-61: ISC23 Postview and Future of IT

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A look back at ISC23 including quantum computing, EuroHPC, the future of Supercomputing with a backdrop of Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI), AI, and Cloud, and whether we are living in times when “everybody” is a systems company.

This episode is sponsored by Lenovo.

 

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Mktg_Podcast-27: Data, Driverless Marketing, Inclusivity

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The Cart (cartoon) of the week is about data and instigates a big discussion about complexity of marketing data leading to a future when “Driverless Marketing” might become a reality. The noble goal of moving your brand towards more inclusivity did not work out as planned for Anheuser–Busch. We end with a discussion of quotes and memes that have their heart in the right place but are too sweeping for their own good and make it sound like “you had to be there”!

 

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@HPCpodcast-60: TOP500 at ISC23 Conference

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Doug is in Hamburg, Germany for the ISC23 conference where the 61st edition of the TOP500 list has just been published. 30+ years of systematic data on the highest performing computer architecture and configurations is a treasure trove and we look at the top line insights from this installment, including the GREEN500, HPCG, and the AI-inspired mixed precision benchmark HPL-MxP.

This episode is sponsored by Lenovo.

 

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@HPCpodcast-59: HPC Software

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This episode starts to look at HPC software and its convergence with traditional enterprise IT software. We cover the evolution of software through phases of IT, the roster of relevant HPC software from development environment to system administration, and end-user requirements, and traditional and emerging applications. Future episodes and guests will focus on various aspects of HPC software.

This episode is sponsored by Lenovo.

 

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@HPCpodcast-58: Liquid Cooling in Supercomputing

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Liquid cooling in supercomputing came up in our last episode on decarbonization and environment, sustainability, and governance (ESG). We cover liquid cooling in this episode: everything from chilled doors to direct-to-chip, immersion cooling, vapor chambers, and even under-water data centers.

This episode is sponsored by Lenovo.

 

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Mktg_Podcast-26: In Search of Ethical Marketing

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The Cart (cartoon) of the week is about mis-targeted ads despite all the data that online services have about their users. The challenges of Tupperware, the company that pioneered food storage containers, is next, and we end with a discussion of ethical marketing and a call for examples of successful and ethical marketing, as a counterbalance to too many stories where misbehavior is tolerated and even viewed as clever.

 

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@HPCpodcast-55: Post-Exascale Computing for the NNSA

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Post-Exascale Computing for the NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) is the subject of a new report by a distinguished working and review committes comprised of notable supercomputing experts. The report examines the trajectory of high-end supercomputing to date, future needs, emerging technologies, advances in scientific disciplines and computational methods, and the workforce, industry partnerships, and roadmap necessary for successful deployment. We bring you a summary of the report’s key findings and recommendations. @HPCpodcast is delighted that two of the panelists were guests of this show in recent months.

 

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@HPCpodcast-54: Silicon Photonics, w Keren Bergman

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We discuss Silicon Photonics with Keren Bergman, the Charles Batchelor Professor of Electrical Engineering, Faculty Director of the Columbia Nano Initiative, and Principal Investigator of Lightwave Research Laboratory at Columbia University. Prof. Bergman is the recipient of the 2016 IEEE Photonics Engineering Award and is a Fellow of Optica (Optical Society of America) and IEEE.

The wide range of topics includes: Silicon Photonics vs. Fiber Optics used in telecommunications, the use of photonics c0mmunication vs. computation, what aspects of light are used to achieve  efficiencies, packet switching vs circuit switching, current advances and speeds, economic considerations and likely first uses, supply chain, fabrication, assembly, and packaging technologies for photonics.

 

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OrionX Download Podcast: Future System Architecture

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Adrian Cockcroft, Stephen Perrenod, and Shahin Khan get together in a free-flowing coffee-shop style discussion of future system architecture in supercomputing. The motivation for this episode started during the SC22 conference, where several advances seemed to point to significant changes in system design and optimization. This led to Adrian’s article “SC22: CXL3.0, the Future of HPC Interconnects and Frontier vs. Fugaku” and a deeper dive in his paper: “Supercomputing Predictions: Custom CPUs, CXL3.0, and Petalith Architectures”. Similar threads were discussed over at the @HPCpodcast. At the same time, the well-received and well-discussed paper “Myths and Legends in High-Performance Computing” by Satoshi Matsuoka, Jens Domke, Mohamed Wahib, Aleksandr Drozd, and Torsten Hoefler, instigated a valuable discussion of 12 topics, from major technology areas to specific capabilities in future HPC systems, to application performance. All of that is discussed here flavored with some historical accounts.

 

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@HPCpodcast-53: Warfare as Product Development, Intel Roadmap

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When soldiers are software engineers a new warfare emerges. Modern warfare is similar to, and needs, high tech product development with fast cycles and incremental improvement. The new Technopolitics section starts with the role of software engineers enlisted in the Ukrain war. Next is the House Committee on Science Space and Technology hearing on “US, China, and the Fight for Global Leadership: Building a U.S. National Science and Technology Strategy”. New and substantial funding (£800m) for the UK Exascale program promises to bring the UK into the exascale world by 2046. (This was subsequently complemented by another £2.5B for quantum technologies.) Under the HPC-AI section of the podcast, we discuss the recent changes to the Intel high-end GPU roadmap and lament the lost opportunity to communicate that better.

 

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Mktg_Podcast-24: Defining Success, Econometrics, Loyalty

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Shahin and Doug discuss a variety of hot topics in marketing, starting what marketing success means, which leads to the difficulties in digital attribution and interpreting data, and whether econometrics can be a solution (as suggested in a recent article in The Drum, “Digital attribution is dead! Les Binet tells us why marketers need econometrics in 2023”, by Samuel Scott). They also get deeper into how the concept of “customer satisfaction” actually correlates to product sales.

 

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@HPCpodcast-51: Bob Coecke on Quantum in Pictures (Book)

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In the The Messenger Lectures in 1964 at MIT, Richard Feynman said “On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. … Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘But how can it be like that?’ because you will get ‘down the drain’, into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.”

Why is that? And can the teaching and understanding of Quantum Mechanics be simplified without loss of accuracy or mathematical rigor? For the answer, you have come to the right podcast!

Bob Coecke, co-author with Stefano Gogioso of the recently-released book Quantum in Pictures: A New Way to Understand the Quantum World joins us to discuss why quantum mechanics is so hard, the inspirations behind the book, and how he’s working to make quantum computing more accessible through his work.

Bob is Chief Scientist at Quantinuum, Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Emeritus Fellow at Wolfson College Oxford. For the previous two decades, he was Professor of Quantum Foundations, Logics and Structures at the Department of Computer Science at Oxford University, where he co-founded and led a multi-disciplinary Quantum Group that grew to 50 members and supervised close to 70 PhD students. He pioneered Categorical Quantum Mechanics, ZX-calculus, DisCoCat natural language meaning, mathematical foundations for resource theories, Quantum Natural Language Processing, and DisCoCirc natural language meaning. His work has been headlined by various media outlets, including Forbes, New Scientist, PhysicsWorld, ComputerWeekly. He’s also a musician and painter.

 

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OrionX Download Podcast: Crypto Winter, SBT, CBDC

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The crypto winter arrived but a lot continues to happen in the cryptocurrency industry.  Stephen and Shahin cover the current state of things, from some of the causes of significant failures, to Bitcoin’s recent rise, new developments in Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), and self-sovereign identity (SSI) and Soul-Bound Tokens (SBT).

 

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@HPCpodcast-49: 12 Myths & Legends with Satoshi Matsuoka and Torsten Hoefler

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So many great ideas in tech but how do you assess them scientifically? In “Myths and Legends in High-Performance Computing“, Satoshi Matsuoka, Jens Domke, Mohamed Wahib, Aleksandr Drozd, and Torsten Hoefler tackle 12 important topics, from major technology areas to specific capabilities in future HPC systems, to application performance. They help formulate the right questions, and instigate the important discussions, by posing the topics as myths and legends in an enjoyable and humorous paper.  Also check out InsideHPC’s coverage of the article: “Conventional Wisdom Watch: Matsuoka & Co. Take on 12 Myths of HPC.” We caught up with Prof. Matsuoka and Hoefler, one in an airport, to discuss the paper and some of the major topics. Really fun and insightful.

 

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@HPCpodcast-48: Handel Jones on China and the AI Race

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Join us for an insightful discussion with Dr. Handel Jones, author of the recent book When AI Rules the World: China, the U.S., and the Race to Control a Smart Planet, and CEO of International Business Strategies, Inc.  Subjects covered include where the United States stands compared to China in advanced technologies, trade wars, chip fabrication economics and capacity, battery technologies, demographics, Taiwan, rare earths, Covid, and what the future might hold.

 

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@HPCpodcast-47: New Chips from Intel, 2023 Predictions, AI

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In the first episode of 2023, Shahin and Doug discuss the recent chip announcements and their implications for HPC. Also covered are industry predictions for the year to come that were featured in the InsideHPC article, An AI-Flavored Set of HPC Predictions for 2023, AI for public use, and a promise to invite Prof. Matsuoka to discuss his recent paper on common myths in HPC.

 

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@HPCpodcast-46: Year in Review 2022

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In this year-in-review double-issue episode, we continue what is becoming a tradition, covering some of the notable topics of the past year including: HPC market growth, China, exascale and future of supercomputing, quantum tech, SC22, AI, ACM Turing Award, interconnects, the Nvidia-Arm deal, the Chips and Science Act, HPC software, and fusion energy.

 

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Mktg_Podcast-21: Barbie, ChatGPT, HBS Product v. Financial Engineering

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Barbie-the-movie was announced and it is a big, and so-far effective, move. It also offers such a rich set of marketing topics for discussion. Conversational AI, ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) exceeded expectations at least for the first few interactions, impressed, disappointed, and scared, all at the same time while becoming a tool that marketing teams started testing and using immediately. A quote on impression data leads to a quick discussion again of the role of the CMO, while an old quote about Harvard Business School leads to product innovation vs. financial engineering.

 

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@HPCpodcast-45: Quantum Networking, Sensing, Computing at Brookhaven National Lab

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Kerstin Kleese van Dam, Gabriella Carini, and Meifing Lin of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) join Shahin and Doug to discuss all things Quantum, covering Quantum Sensing, Quantum Networking, and Quantum Computing. We also get a glimpse of BNL and its global leadership across a wide range of research that it conducts.

 

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Dataquest: Hot ice cream, sleepless cats and affordable quantum computers

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Dataquest: Hot ice cream, sleepless cats and affordable quantum computers

“We do not expect a ‘transistor moment’ yet, where a particular approach to quantum computing would break away. Superconducting, Trapped ion/atom, Photonics, Electron spin, Topological, etc. and possibly combinations of them will continue to receive significant R&D investment.” – Shahin Khan

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@HPCpodcast-44: SC22 Postview

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In this SC22 postview, we go over what happened at the show in Dallas last week. Topics include: the energy and attendance at the show, liquid cooling, PCIe, CXL, AI Chips, Open Standards, Storage, Future of Supercomputing, global players, and yes, where SC23 will be held and what its tagline is!

 

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Mktg_Podcast-19: Rebranding Office, Low-Margin M&A, Brand Loyalty

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We start with Microsoft’s Decision to rebrand Office again, this time to Microsoft 365: eliminating “Office” and aligning “365” with the whole company. Retail mergers are next, and interesting because it’s a competitive low margin business. Buying vs. shopping maps well to online vs. in-store and we have a funny story to discuss that next. We end with meat alternatives and how difficult it is to grow in that market, and a big discussion on brand loyalty and brand love.

 

@HPCpodcast-43: TOP500 at SC22

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The 60th edition of the TOP500 list is here, reresenting 30 years of systematic data on the highest performing computer architecture and configurations. Whether or not the list surprises in a big way (you’ll have to look at the GREEN500 list for the surprise this time), it always offers important historical data and valuable “tea leaves” to anticipate the future. We look at the highlights of what changed and what can be expected to change in systems, technologies, and geographies.  The Frontier system at Oakridge National Lab continues its commanding lead over the list. Europe shows interesting growth. China continues to not play. AMD shows unsurprising leadership in CPUs and growing presence at the high-end in GPUS while Nvidia retains its comfortable lead in GPUs. Ethernet is a flood that gently rises every time but the interconnect landscape is evolving in important ways. HPCG puts it all in perspective, and the mixed precision benchmark HPL-MxP points to the evolution of HPC and AI as they impact each other.

 

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@HPCpodcast-42: Chris Miller on Chip War

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Chris Miller, author of the important and riveting book Chip War, joins us to discuss the crucial nature of the semiconductor industry and and the global competition that has been a part of its history since early days. He is Associate Professor of International History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Eurasia Director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Chip War has been shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award.

We had a long list of topics and questions:

  • How did we get here? Was it poor risk management, shear complexity, or too many black swans?
  • The impact of political dysfunction, social polarization, and policy inconsistency on waging such wars.
  • Might Western values and standards of privacy and individual freedom a competitive disadvantage in the age of AI where raw data superiority can lead to economic superiority?
  • Has technology shifted from a situation where it’d be used first in govt/military, then companies, then consumers to now, when it’s the reverse: the consumer market, then companies, then government?
  • How much time is there to regain competitiveness? Why did the US not learn its lessons after Japan’s rise in memory chip fabrication technology? Is there something missing in the public-private partnership model in the US?
  • Is supercomputing its own race or is it subordinate to the bigger tech issue?
  • Was there a lost opportunity to formulate a different, more harmonious, world order?
  • What is the impact of current trade barriers? What options do other countries have?
  • Several of the leading cast in the book seem to have had challenging personal journeys before they became prominent. Is that a coincidence or a requirement to build a world-leading semiconductor company?! Can it be that it is an effective way to instill the kind of discipline and culture that is required to succeed in the chip business?

And we got through most of them.

Join us for this fascinating discussion.

 

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@HPCpodcast-41: SC Taglines, Trade Wars, Shared Memory Tech

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SC22 is approaching and we take stock of the taglines for the show going back to SC14. Do you remember any of them? This years tagline leads us to trade wars and the impact they could have on scientific collaboration. We’ll have an entire show on ship wars next week with a special guest. Also covered is new shared memory capabilities in the cloud.

 

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Mktg_Podcast-18: Musky Texts, Distinctive, Data, Marketing Mix-It-Up

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The Twitter deal happened, but rewind the tape to when a trove of text messages was published, providing a glimpse into how people of note in tech discuss deals and strategies. So of course we have to discuss that. Then it’s off to another flare-up about “distinctive vs. differentiated”. Is “distinctive” distinctive or differentiated?! The continuing complexities of marketing data. And how your marketing mix needs to mix it up!

 

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@HPCpodcast-40: Kathy Yelick on Exascale Day, Research, New College

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We are delighted to have Kathy Yelick as our special guest to celebrate the Exascale Day (10/18). Dr. Yelick is the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the Vice Chancellor for Research at UC Berkeley, and Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her expansive perspective and expertise led us through a wide ranging discussion including the impact of exascale computing on society, the role of HPC in helping set public and international policy, multi-physics research, advancing software technologies, diversity in HPC, the recent RFI from DOE and what the future might hold, the enormous contributions of UC Berkeley to computing technologies and scientific research and how it stays in the forefront, and proposals for a new college. We also touch on a few of Dr. Yelick’s research projects such as Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) and the ExaBiome project and the Berkeley Benchmarking and Optimization (Bebop).

 

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@HPCpodcast-39: Aurora, Intel Day, Linux Wars, Tesla Day

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The storied Aurora exascale supercomputer at Argonne National Lab is making progress as blades for the system are reportedly shipping. This was part of the news from the well-crafted and executed Intel Innovation Day. Open source software is a big part of the HPC/AI puzzle and Linux wars are heating up. The Tesla AI day provided some info on what is new with their home-grown AI chip and the associated system.

 

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@HPCpodcast-38: Steve Conway on HPC Technology and Policy Trends

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We caught up with Steve Conway, well-known HPC executive and analyst formerly with IDC and Hyperion Research, in an engaging and wide ranging discussion. We start with Edge HPC and trends towards massively-distributed massively-heterogeneous computing, which takes us to convergence of HPC and AI, mixed precision spectrum, the importance of simulation, the impact of exascale on general computing, global policies, China and Europe, the impact on scientific collaboration, differences in funding models, and the necessary ingredients to attract top talent.

 

@HPCpodcast-37: John Gustafson on Feynman, Gustafson’s Law, Posit Format

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How did Richard Feynman end up playing the bongo drums? How did a new take on Amdahl’s Law helped propel massively parallel computing and become Gustafson’s Law? And what’s wrong with IEEE 754 number format that the new Posit format fixes? We go to the source as we welcome special guest John Gustafson in another very lively conversation.

 

@HPCpodcast-36: Adrian Cockcroft on Cloud, HPC Data, ESG, and Netflix

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Cool stories and valuable insights in this episode as we get together with Adrian Cockcroft who recently joined OrionX having served as a vice president at AWS for the past several years. We start with Netflix’s move to the cloud, a significant event that helped put cloud computing on the map. Then it’s on to Environment, Sustainability, and Governance (ESG), Formula-1 racing, and cloud configurations and interconnects for HPC and AI workloads.

 

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@HPCpodcast-35: Hot Chips Conference, Quantum Update, Frontier

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Highlights from the recent Hot Chips conference with discussions of UCIe and why it could cause a ripple effect in the industry, Moore’s law and 3D packaging, Silicon Photonics, inference in the device or in the data center, silicon for the edge, CXL, and code generation. This is followed by an update on Quantum Computing following two important papers on quantum machine learning and unstructured NP-complete problems. The field continues to be in its infancy while making rapid and significant progress. We end with a review of the dedication ceremonies for the Frontier exascale system. Join us.

 

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Mktg_Podcast-15: Lead Generation

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Every company spends money on Lead Generation. Sometimes quite a lot. How do you determine your marketing mix and then match it to the sales cycle and buying behavior? Lots of moving parts here and we go over many of them: PR, SEO, funnel and buying behavior, lead qualification/scoring/nurturing, sales-marketing alignment, and lead flow. As usual, marketing metrics is an important topic and especially quality and meaning of data. We end with a few recommendations.

 

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Mktg_Podcast-14: Nudging, Growth Hacking, Ethics of Marketing

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When does “nudging” becoming “nagging”? Behavioral science is on the case with studies (one is critiqued here), on how choice architecture and publication bias impact what works and when.  We then move to “Growth Hacking”, discussing what it is and how dangerously close it gets to crossing ethical lines.

 

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@HPCpodcast-34: CXL, CHIPS Act

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After several years of experimentation and various consortia, CXL is emerging as the standard for advanced functionality for fabric technologies. We also discuss some of the details of the CHIPS and Science Act that was recently passed in the US.

 

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OrionX Download Podcast: Fintech Update, CryptoSuper500, CBDC, NFT, DeFi, Regulations

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The OrionX Download podcast is back with a new episode on the latest in Fintech and Crypto with Shahin Khan and Stephen Perrenod. From Stephen’s newly released CryptoSuper500 report to the latest on CBDCs, NFTs, DeFi, and regulations, the team offers the same realistic perspective and analysis that have made previous episodes so popular.

 

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@HPCpodcast-33: Equity-Diversity-Inclusion in HPC

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Our special guest today is Melyssa Fratkin, Industrial Programs Director at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), who also co-chairs Texas Women in HPC with Carolyn Devany, Executive Chair at Data Vortex Technologies. Following her excellent talk at the Dell HPC Community meeting in Austin last week, we caught up with Melyssa to discuss the state of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in HPC and her recommendations on how to accelerate progress in this important area. We ask lots of questions and cover lots of topics, including why this is such a hard problem, the burden of being a pioneer, the impact of political environments and changing laws, how to post jobs that attract a diverse set of candidates, why you need support from the top and across the organization, and more. Join us!

 

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@HPCpodcast-32: The Role of Marketing in HPC

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One of the most recognized names in strategic marketing and communications in HPC, and an “SC Perennial“, special guest Mike Bernhardt joins Doug and Shahin to discuss the important role that the marketing function plays in HPC. A lot has changed in HPC and a lot has changed in marketing. What should smart organizations do to improve their market presence and build a loyal customer base?

 

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@HPCpodcast-31: ASML Export Control, HPC Software Stack

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Following reports that ASML is under diplomatic pressure to regulate the export of its fabrication equipment to China, we discuss market data, other suppliers of fab equipment, and a quick view of some of ASML’s own suppliers. Also covered are the differences between the approach to Exascale in China and the US based on recent research by Hyperion. We end the episode by setting up the vast universe that is the modern HPC software stack as we prepare to cover it systematically over several episodes. We welcome suggestions for guests who can shed light on the state of software in specific layers.

 

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@HPCpodcast-30: DOE RFI with Horst Simon, from System to Ecosystem

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Following the Request for Information (RFI) issued last week by the DOE, we caught up with Dr. Horst Simon, Special Advisor to the Laboratory Director at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and co-editor of the TOP500 list since 2000, to take us through how the DOE is gearing up to go beyond Exascale. A very insightful conversation touching on many aspects of what’s next!

 

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@HPCpodcast-29: Up Close and Personal with Frontier, and What Lies Beyond

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The HPC User Forum held a special event at Oak Ridge National Laboratory last week, complete with an opportunity to get a viewing of the facilities (not quite a tour) and discussions of Exascale Computing and beyond. Doug Black was on the scene and we discuss what all went down. Of special note is the staffing challenges of HPC sites, and the brewing strategy about how future leadership computing systems would look like. This is an important topic that we have covered with our guests in previous episodes and some patterns are emerging as we continue to analyze the future of supercomputing hardware and software.

 

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@HPCpodcast-28: LaMDA and AI Sentience, Crypto Price Collapse

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The conversational AI, LaMDA seems to represent a significant advance in AI, bringing up discussions of AI sentience, consciousness, and personhood. It also underscores the urgency of thoughtful social policies based on ethical and legal frameworks. Also discussed is the state of Crypto and NFT: cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens. Should we look at them as technologies that might find valid use cases, investment vehicles that require close scrutiny, or both? These are very important topics in our times.

 

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@HPCpodcast-27: Thomas Sterling, The State of HPC

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Following his always-anticipated and always-insightful closing keynote at the recent ISC conference, we caught up with Prof. Thomas Sterling to discuss the state of HPC.  Dr. Sterling is Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering at the Indiana University (IU) School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, and President and Co-founder of Simultac, a technology company focused on non-von-Neumann memory-based system architectures. Since receiving his Ph.D from MIT as a Hertz Fellowm Dr. Sterling has been a pioneer of parallel processing systems in HPC. His many achievements include the creation in 1994 of  the “Beowulf cluster” with Donald Becker at NASA, a system that helped drive the scale-out computing architecture.

Here are the topics and the time-stamp in the podcast when they are discussed:

  • 01:23 Supercomputing “Race”
  • 04:15 HPC in Society
  • 06:40 Climate Change, Controlled Fusion
  • 09:00 HPC’s Role in Informing or Helping Set Social Policy
  • 10:37 Machine Intelligence
  • 15:50 Future of HPC
  • 22:25 Beowulf Bash story
  • 25:07 Getting into Parallel Processing
  • 28:10 Skill-set, Workforce, Software, Accessibility
  • 31:09 Performing at the Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center
  • 34:68 Leonard Bernstein
  • 35:30 ISC22 Closing Keynote

 

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