When one thinks about the largest supercomputing sites on the planet and the approach to examining future technologies for next-generation systems, it might seem logical to guess they are at the bleeding edge of exploring entirely new, under-the-radar architectures and approaches that could spike the curve of Moore’s Law. …
Just as the fervor died down around the massive deals for forthcoming pre-exascale supercomputers in the United States following the CORAL procurements (most recently, with the announcement of Aurora—the only one of three such HPC deals that is not betting the future on IBM OpenPower systems) the supercomputing spark was stoked again, this time, from across the pond. …
It has always been our contention that recessions drive successive waves of technology transitions in the datacenter. …
For those who marveled at the $16.7 billion deal Intel made to acquire field programmable gate array maker, Altera, an equal number raised eyebrows at the estimate given by Intel CEO to announce the purchase that one-third of cloud workloads would take advantage of FPGA acceleration by 2020. …
Now that the on-again, off-again deal between Intel, the world’s largest maker of processors, and Altera, one of the dominant makers of field programmable gate arrays, is going to happen for the tidy sum of $16.7 billion in cash, Intel is poised to usher in a new era of computing while at the same time countering the many competitive threats it has in the datacenter. …
For some users in high performance computing and a growing range of deep learning and data-intensive application segments, the shift toward mixed (heterogeneous) architectures is becoming more common. …
IBM has been a pioneer in large scale, hybrid computing and has staked a substantial portion of the future of its Power platform, and the ones that partners are building in conjunction with it through the OpenPower Foundation, on the idea that various kinds of compute, storage, and interconnects will be used to fabricate systems that are precisely tailored to efficiently run specific workloads. …
There has been a noticeable interest uptick in reconfigurable computing devices, most notably, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). …
With the oil and gas industry continuing to spend on massive supercomputers, even in the wake of declining revenues, and no sign of the HPC business slowing for the oil and gas segment, one has to wonder what alternatives on the hardware and software front these companies might look to as costs (for both systems and the power required to support them) drives skywards. …
The arrival of augmented reality for the masses is imminent with Google Glass and other competing devices, but in many respects, the makers of these have put the proverbial cart before the horse. …
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