Given the discussions on this and other web sites by biased partisans (myself included), I thought this headline (SMB Linux use on the rise) and article was interesting.
Month: September 2006
Generating an "optimal" circuit from a language construct
We use high level languages to provide an abstraction against the hardware, OS, system services we want to use. The compiler is responsible for this mapping. So when I write a simple loop
Read moreGenerating an "optimal" circuit from a language construct
To abstract or not to abstract: that is the question …
… Whether ’tis nobler in the developers mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous application performance,
Or to take arms against a sea of development troubles
And by abstraction end them?
— “Bill S” on whether or not to use higher level abstractions when programming for performance.
Read moreTo abstract or not to abstract: that is the question …
The market for accelerators and APUs
The PeakStream news, raising $17M in a B round was wonderful to hear about. I am happy for them, and wish them success. Recently I read that Linux Networx raised money as well. LNXI is also an interesting company. Maybe this is the harbinger of good things to come.
Read moreThe market for accelerators and APUs
APU programming made easy?
The folks over at Peakstream have some interesting ideas. Very similar to what we have been talking about and pitching for the past 4 years.
Read moreAPU programming made easy?
Breaking mirror symmetry in HPC
If you are not already reading HPCWire on a regular basis, I do recommend it as one of the “must” weekly aggregation sites. They have an interesting article on the “coming” heterogeneous computing systems. Neat idea, but heterogeneous supercomputing systems are already here. Have been for a while. In massive numbers. Working on specialized HPC problems. More about this in a moment.
Read moreBreaking mirror symmetry in HPC
APUs in the news
Referencing this article.
When we talked to a few VC’s previously about APUs, we were asked to show that there would be demand. Kind of hard to do so in advance of the market, but we made rough estimates. Earlier this year, ClearSpeed took its reference design board and started selling it. Sure enough people bought it. Because it does a number of things quite well. At a lower power consumption.
A teraflop here, a teraflop there, and pretty soon you are talking about real computing power
It seems IBM will be building another new NNSA machine. So whats interesting about this, other than IBM getting good press? Well this appears to be part of a growing wave of heterogenous high performance computing systems. Roadrunner appears to be a mix of COTS Opteron hardware, and Cell based blades as Accelerator Processing Units (APUs).