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.
Podcasts
@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-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.