The OrionX Podcast Channel
Big Ideas. Simplified.
Join the OrionX team and guests in lively discussions of Big Ideas in Tech, covering trends and products that can impact your investment decisions and change the technology options you consider.
HPC, AI
Join Shahin Khan and Doug Black, insideHPC’s editor-in-chief, in their weekly discussion of key technology trends that drive high performance computing and artificial intelligence.
Marketing
News and happenings in the world of marketing, from the board room to customer programs, with Shahin Khan and Doug Garnett of Protonik.net.
Podcasts
HPC News Bytes – 20240318
– European AI Act
– 5nm Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine 3
– A faster matrix-multiply algorithm?
– Meta’s GenAI Infrastructure
HPC News Bytes – 20240311
– IndiaAI Mission, including a 10,000-GPU supercomputer
– Countries court chip manufacturers for local fabs
– AI value-chain consolidation from fabs to apps to clouds
– Atos spinout of Eviden caught in financial complexity
Mktg_Podcast-40: CX in Digitized Mkts, Mktg-Finance Alignment, Poetry
– Customer experience in the digitized markets. Where’s the competition?
– Marketing-Finance Alignment
– Poetry! What do you lose when you analyze? What’s missing when you synthesize?
– Kicking the can on conversion
– Dune merch?
HPC News Bytes – 20240304
– GPU Shortage, HPE, Dell Financial Results
– GPU allocation: CSP, On-prem, AI PCs, Embedded AI
– Chip Capacity, Intel Fabs in Germany, Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing
– Singapore AI program, Mid-career Training
– AI business justification, AI talent shortage
HPC News Bytes – 20240226
– Intel Foundry Event, “Systems Foundry” Era
– Nvidia Earnings,Valuation, AI Learning vs AI Inference, In-Memory Computing for AI
– HPC in Space, Data Centers on the Moon
– ISC-24 Conference
HPC News Bytes – 20240219
– AI Security, Safety, Containment, Governance
– U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC)
– Running CUDA Apps On ROCm
– Exascale software linear algebra software library
– Chinese chipmaker Loongson tapes out 16-core DragonChain-powered CPU
– Photonic computing chip at University of Pennsylvania
Mktg_Podcast-39: Mix, Apple Vision Pro, Market Research, Strategy
– Marketing Mix, can you brand, nurture, activate, sell all at the same time?
– Marketing of Apple Vision Pro
– Market Research, Quantitative, Qualitative, pitfalls
– Strategy, Change Management, Praxis
HPC News Bytes – 20240212
– Honda taps Cadence Design System digital twin supercomputer for CFD, air taxi R&D
– Chip news: Nvidia, TSMC, SKHynix, IBM AIU, OpenAI
– Kathy Yelick to Deliver ISC 2024 Keynote on Post-Exascale Computing
– Google settles with Singular Computing over claims of stolen AI chip tech
HPC News Bytes – 20240205
– Argonne National Lab’s Nexus Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI)
– Delays in Intel’s Fab in Ohio, CHIPS Act
– Mitchel Institute report on Quantum Information Science and Technologies
– Controlling Emergent AI, High Calory Data
Bitcoin ETF, Bitcoin Halving, CBDCs – OrionX Download Podcast
Bitcoin ETF and Bitcoin halving have fueled renewed excitement in the cryptocurrency world and it is time to catch up with the state of the market again. Dr. Stephen Perrenod joins Shahin Khan to go over the latest hot topics: Wall Street entering the Bitcoin market with about a dozen Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETF), the upcoming halving of newly minted Bitcoins, and the state of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).
HPC News Bytes – 20240129
– Italy’s Eni Acquiring 600 PFLOPS System
– Intel’s Advanced Fab in New Mexico, UMC partnership
– NSF’s Advanced Computing National AI Research Resource Pilot
– D-Wave’s 1,200+ Qubit Advantage2 Prototype
– IonQ’s 35 algorithmic qubit system
Mktg_Podcast-38: Sam Brealey on Strategy, Small Business Mktg, AI
Special guest Sam Brealey joins us as we discuss marketing strategy and execution, specially for small businesses, “pivot to video, and AI in marketing. Cartoon of the week on marketing (or is it sales?) strategy kicks off the discussion. Join us!
@HPCpodcast-79: Travis Humble of ORNL on Quantum Tech
We discuss the state of Quantum Information Science with our special guest Dr. Travis Humble, a global authority on the subject, director of the Quantum Science Center, a Distinguished Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and director of the lab’s Quantum Computing Institute. QSC is a partnership funded by Department of Energy comprised of leading academic institutions, National Labs, and corporations. Dr. Humble is editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing, Associate Editor for Quantum Information Processing, and co-chair of the IEEE Quantum Initiative. He also holds a joint faculty appointment with the University of Tennessee Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education. Please join us for an insightful discussion of quantum technologies and their impact on supercomputing and scientific discovery.
HPC News Bytes – 20240122
– Synopsys to Acquire Ansys
– Meta is spending billions on Nvidia chips
– OpenAI CEO raising billions to build new chips and new chip factories
– Pawesey selects QuEra, US Geological Survey selects Q-CTRL, Quantinuum Raises $300M
HPC News Bytes – 20240115
– RIKEN Hybrid Quantum-HPC Platform with Quantinuum
– Google in $1.67B AI Chip Patent Infringement Trial
– Crack in Cloud Egress Fees
– ORNL Post-Exascale RFP for next generation OLCF-6 to be delivered in the 2027 time frame
– HPE Acquires Juniper Networks
HPC News Bytes – 20240108
– Intel 4 fab, IDM 2.0, Ericsson
– CXL, Samsung, Red Hat
– AI startup funding
– Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) landscape
HPC News Bytes – 20240101
– Moore’s Law slows down, Intel, TSMC
– TSMC 1nm Chips, Arizona plant
– Huawei results, Mate 60 Pro smartphone, Kirin 9000S chip
– DARPA US2QC, PsiQuantum, Microsoft
@HPCpodcast-78: 2023 Year in Review
2023 Year in Review is our annual special edition as we look back at one of the more eventful years in recent history for HPC, AI, Quantum Computing, and other advanced technologies. The list below includes time stamps (in minutes and seconds) and the associated topic in the podcast.
02:00 – HPC
03:45 – AI
08:03 – Metaverse
12:01 – Chips, GPUs, Accelerators
14:00 – GPU Competition
14:00 – GPU Competition
15:46 – Open Source
17:54 – Aurora Supercomputer
20:21 – TOP500
20:55 – Cloud in TOP10
21:53 – China
24:15 – Europe
25:55 – Quantum Computing
30:12 – Photonics
31:35 – Cryptocurrencies
HPC News Bytes – 20231225
– EU Exascale, HLRS, MareNostrum Inauguration
– Neuromorphic AI gets active
– ASML’s 1st High-NA EUV system goes to Intel
– Argonne’s Bimetallic All-optical Switch
HPC News Bytes – 20231218
– Intel launches Gen-5 Emerald Rapids
– New York State’s own “Chips Act”: $10B for NanoTech Complex with IBM, Micron, others
– Quantum Computing market size from Hyperion Research
– AI “Benchmarketing”: Nvidia takes AMD’s bait
Mktg_Podcast-37: Agency Pricing Models, What is Quality?
– Cartoon: your product v. pictures of cats
– Agency/freelance pricing models
– How do you define quality?
HPC News Bytes – 20231211
– AMD MI300 availability as AI Chip Party heats up
– Q2B Silicon Valley quantum conference update
– Linux foundation’s High-Performance Software Foundation and DAOS Foundation
– Int’l consortium for trustworthy and reliable generative AI models for science
– EU agrees landmark deal on regulation of AI
– ISC Submission Deadlines extended
Mktg_Podcast-36: Value of Time vs Experience, Marketing Supercomputers
– Cartoon: Ven diagram
– What’s the value of Time? of Experience? Creativity? Luck?
– Do you like your customers?
– Marketing Supercomputers, case study
HPC News Bytes – 20231204
– Why would The New Yorker cover HPC technologies?
– Open Benchmark Council’s TOP100 lists
– Intel as one of the largest customers of TSMC’s high-end fab?
– Digital Twins for hyropower at ORNL and PNNL
@HPCpodcast-77: Adrian Cockcroft on Future Architectures
Adrian Cockcroft joins us again after SC23 to discuss TOP500 trends, the AI-HPC crossover, liquid cooling, chiplets, and the emergence of UCIe and CXL advancements. Be sure to listen to previous episodes with Adrian; Episode 36 on HPC in cloud and sustainability data and Episode 55 on decarbonization and ESG.
HPC News Bytes – 20231127
– NVIDIA Ethernet push with Dell, HPE, Lenovo
– Research and Engineering Studio on AWS
– Latest on Chinese exascale
– HPC-Quantum integration: Riken’s Fugaku + NTT Ei and Simulated systems
HPC News Bytes – 20231120
– SC23 stats
– Exascale update and future
– Raft of new chips
– Quantum Village at SC23
– UCIe, PCIe, Ultra Ethernet
@HPCpodcast-76: TOP500 at SC23
We provide details and our analysis of the latest TOP500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. This round sees quite a shake-up in the top 10 and reveals interesting changes in the market.
HPC News Bytes – 20231113
– SC23 Starts, TOP500 later today
– Storage at Scale, DAOS, Aurora, Linux Foundation
– Sandia National Lab and DDN
– TSMC 1.4nm, SMIC financials
@HPCpodcast-75: Rick Stevens, Mike Papka – Argonne National Lab (ANL)
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).
@HPCpodcast-74: Karl Freund, AI Chips
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.
HPC News Bytes – 20231106
– UK Summit on AI, AI Supercomputers in the UK
– US Presidential Executive Order on AI
– Peter Ungaro on full episode of @HPCpodcast
– Intersect360 Market Update
@HPCpodcast-73: Peter Ungaro – Industry View
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.
Mktg_Podcast-35: Outputs and Outcomes, Self Organizing Units
– Cartoon of the week: double feature
– Are movies getting longer?
– Self Organizing Units, micro metrics for micro management
– Even the best companies face complexity
HPC News Bytes – 20231030
– 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
@HPCpodcast-72: Vanessa Sochat and Alan Sill – HPC.social Community
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.
@HPCpodcast-71: Alain Andreoli – Industry View
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.
HPC News Bytes – 20231023
– HPE Cray at Crusoe Flared Gas Data Centers
– IBM NorthPole AI Chip
– TSMC financials: AI, 3nm, Inventory
– AI Frenzy, AGI, Brain Waves as Input
– Exascale, Aurora, TOP500
@HPCpodcast-70: Paul Messina – Journey to Exascale
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.
HPC News Bytes – 20231016
– China Exascale Investment
– Samsung 3nm, Intel, TSMC
– Exascale Day
– Women in HPC, Why Women Stopped Coding
– GPU Shortage and Competition, Nvidia H100, AMD MI300, Intel Gaudi-2
HPC News Bytes – 20231009
– 1st Exascale Supercomputer in Europe
– Hyperion Rseaech Survey on the use of LLMs in HPC
– AD Little report on Quantum Computing myths and opportunities
– Human Immortality in 2030
Mktg_Podcast-34: Self Organization, J&J’s New Logo, Critics as Media, Buzzwords
– Buzzword Density
– Critics as Media
– J&J’s New Logo
– Emergent Phenomena, Self-Organization in Marketing
HPC News Bytes – 20231002
– 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
HPC News Bytes – 20230925
– 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
Mktg_Podcast-33: NPS, IKEA, Complexity
– Is anything wrong with Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
– Surprising customer reaction to IKEA’s store layout
– Complexity, and why Doug is writing a book about it
HPC News Bytes – 20230918
– Intel Innovation Event, FPGA, Open Source
– AI-Oriented Papers in Science
– Arm IPO and Strategic Shift
– AMD EPYC 8004
@HPCpodcast-69: David Barkai author of Unmatched: 50 Years of Supercomputing
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.
HPC News Bytes – 20230911
– NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM
– Honeywell Leverages Quantum Computing Encryption Keys
– TSMC Silicon Photonics
– Microsoft Copilot AI Indemnification
– HPC Forum Tuscon
Mktg_Podcast-32: Confidence, AI Copyright, Strategy
– Competence v. Confidence v. Complexity
– Bad Data v. Bad Attitude
– AI-Generated Content’s Copyright and DRM
– Strategy v. Change Management
@HPCpodcast-68: Mike McGrath of Red Hat on Linux Controversy
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).
HPC News Bytes – 20230904
– 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
@HPCpodcast-67: Greg Kurtzer of CIQ on Linux Controversy, OELA
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.
HPC News Bytes – 20230828
– 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”
Mktg_Podcast-31: The Unicorn Barbie, Bad Ads, Complexity the book
– The unicorn Barbie
– Sequels v. One-Time Phenomenon v. Fresh New Material
– Bad Ads? Who’s to say?
– Complexity, the book Doug is writing
HPC News Bytes – 20230821
– 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
HPC News Bytes – 20230814
– 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
Mktg_Podcast-30: AI for Market(ing) Mix Modeling
– Cookies and “sketchy data”
– WARC WARNS: AI for Market(ing) Mix Modeling
– GM’s new CMO hailing from digital; and CVS?
HPC News Bytes – 20230807
– 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
@HPCpodcast-66: Argonne AI Testbed w Venkat Vishwanath
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.
Technopolitics, a Technology Lens to Guide Policy – OrionX Download Podcast
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!
HPC News Bytes – 20230731
– AWS p5 instance with Nvidia H100 and AMD Milan
– TACC Stampede-3 mini Aurora plus Omni-Path
– Micron 8-high 24GB HBM3
– Cineca’s “White Space” building infrastructure
HPC News Bytes – 20230724
– 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
HPC News Bytes – 20230717
– SC23 registrations open
– Export control
– Linux wars continue
– Chiplet scale-out, or is it cloud?
– Quantum Computing calculates tackles the hydrogen molecule (H2), it’s a start
Mktg_Podcast-29: Social Media Wars, Crude Data, D2C
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.
@HPCpodcast-65: Linux Wars w Joe Landman
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.
HPC News Bytes – 20230710
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
@HPCpodcast-64: RISC-V CTO Mark Himelstein
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.
@HPCpodcast-63: Quantum Computing with Bob Sorensen
What’s the latest in quantum computing? Special guest Bob Sorensen of Hyperion Research joins us again to discuss market growth, customer sentiment, recent advances in noise management, applications, and the geopolitics of quantum computing.
Mktg_Podcast-28: AI, Product (4 Ps of Marketing)
Cartoon of the week leads to the looming rise of AI and what it means for marketing and how businesses should be responding to the new technology in a way that serves them. Then it’s time to discuss Product, the first of the 4 Ps of marketing.
@HPCpodcast-62: Exascale Software with Sunita Chandrasekaran
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.
@HPCpodcast-61: ISC23 Postview and Future of IT
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.
Mktg_Podcast-27: Data, Driverless Marketing, Inclusivity
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”!
@HPCpodcast-60: TOP500 at ISC23 Conference
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.
@HPCpodcast-59: HPC Software
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.
@HPCpodcast-58: Liquid Cooling in Supercomputing
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.
@HPCpodcast-57: Decarbonization, Renewable Energy, ESG, w Adrian Cockcroft
We caught up with Adrian Cockcroft again, this time to discuss the growing importance of, and the HPC market’s efforts towards, decarbonization, the use of renewable energy, and meeting environment, sustainability, and governance (ESG) objectives.
This episode is sponsored by Lenovo.
@HPCpodcast-56: Generative AI, w Tim Crawford
Tim Crawford, CIO Strategic Advisor and founder of research and advisory firm AVOA, joins us in a discussion of generative AI, data sources, emerging uses of AI in the enterprises, and the complexities of managing and regulating AI.
Mktg_Podcast-26: In Search of Ethical Marketing
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.
@HPCpodcast-55: Post-Exascale Computing for the NNSA
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.
@HPCpodcast-54: Silicon Photonics, w Keren Bergman
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.
Mktg_Podcast-25: Product-Market Fit, Data, Store and Media
The inaugural installment of a new section, Cartoon of the Week, takes us to product-market fit vs just raising more funds. Another recurring subject is marketing data, this time covering “good data” and “same data”. Then it’s time to discuss whether the store really is the media?!
OrionX Download Podcast: Future System Architecture
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.
@HPCpodcast-53: Warfare as Product Development, Intel Roadmap
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.
@HPCpodcast-52: AI iPhone Moment, Virtual Quantum, Silicon Photonics
In what might become a regular segment, we cover important advances in tech that signal changes in markets and policies. This time, we discuss the iPhone moment in AI and the ensuing AI gold rush, virtual quantum computers, and how silicon photonics can change the chip industry.
Mktg_Podcast-24: Defining Success, Econometrics, Loyalty
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.
@HPCpodcast-51: Bob Coecke on Quantum in Pictures (Book)
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.
@HPCpodcast-50: Quantum, AI Chatbots, IBM Cloud’s AI Supercomputer
The latest news in Quantum Computing, as well as Google’s response to ChatGPT, Bard, IBM cloud’s new AI supercomputer, which also leads to a discussion of IBM.
OrionX Download Podcast: Crypto Winter, SBT, CBDC
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).
Mktg_Podcast-23: AI in Marketing, Tie-ins, Add-ons, Science of
AI in marketing given all the new advances, marketing as a science, add-on marketing (ice cream cones), and tie-in marketing (Nike-Tiffany campaign) and the risks of “rebranding”.
@HPCpodcast-49: 12 Myths & Legends with Satoshi Matsuoka and Torsten Hoefler
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.
@HPCpodcast-48: Handel Jones on China and the AI Race
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.
@HPCpodcast-47: New Chips from Intel, 2023 Predictions, AI
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.
Mktg_Podcast-22: CES, Who Decides?, DiffDist Again
In the first episode of 2023, Shahin and Doug discuss their takeaways from CES, differentiation versus distinction in marketing, the importance of authenticity in advertising campaigns, and whether inside marketing staff can make good decisions on behalf of the end-user/consumer.
@HPCpodcast-46: Year in Review 2022
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.
Mktg_Podcast-21: Barbie, ChatGPT, HBS Product v. Financial Engineering
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.
@HPCpodcast-45: Quantum Networking, Sensing, Computing at Brookhaven National Lab
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.
Mktg_Podcast-20: Agency Payment Terms, The CMO Role
Physical events are back. Did you say 360-day payment terms? What do companies and candidates get wrong about the CMO role? And the minefield that is marketing data! Join us.
@HPCpodcast-44: SC22 Postview
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!
Mktg_Podcast-19: Rebranding Office, Low-Margin M&A, Brand Loyalty
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
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.