supercomputing

Intel to lay out supercomputing chip plans

Intel on Tuesday provided more color to its plans for supercomputing chips that would eventually compete with offerings from Nvidia. Intel said it will provide further details next week at a supercomputing conference.

In the wake of Intel's cancelation of the "Larrabee" graphics chip project in December of last year, Intel is now focusing on an analogous project targeted at supercomputers, a market that is generally referred to as high-performance computing or HPC.

"We are...executing on a business opportunity derived from the Larrabee program and Intel research in many-core chips," Bill Kircos, an Intel … Read more

IBM supercomputer mixes Intel, Nvidia chips

IBM announced on Tuesday a hybrid high-performance computer that combines Intel and Nvidia processors--a first for IBM.

The IBM iDataPlex Dx360 M3 is powered by both Intel Xeon central processing units (CPUs) and Nvidia Tesla graphics processing units (GPUs) and is designed to be clustered with other Dx360 M3 modular servers to form a supercomputer.

This is the first time a major computer company has adopted Nvidia GPUs for a supercomputer that can be marketed worldwide.

"Now customers will have access to everything IBM brings to the table in high-performance computing," Sumit Gupta, senior manager of Nvidia's … Read more

IBM liquid-cooled supercomputer heats building

An IBM supercomputer is doubling as a space heater via a technique that reduces energy use by 40 percent and dramatically lowers the overall carbon footprint.

Based at Swiss university ETH Zurich and dubbed Aquasar, the liquid-cooled supercomputer went live on Thursday and started analyzing fluid dynamics while simultaneously providing heat for the building. In a typical data center, about half of the energy is used for cooling.

Researchers at IBM and ETH Zurich will monitor the system, which consists of two IBM BladeCenter servers in one rack, able to compute six teraflops. They will be gathering data on energy … Read more

Inside NASA's world-class supercomputer center

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--If you're a materials scientist at NASA's Glenn Research Center, or an engineer at the Johnson or Marshall Space Centers studying Space Shuttle flow-control valves, or any one of countless others in the agency needing a supercomputer, there's really just one place to go.

That place is the advanced supercomputing facility at the Ames Research Center here, the home of Pleiades, NASA's flagship computer, a monster of a machine that, with a current rating of 973 teraflops--or 973 trillion floating point operations per second--is today ranked the sixth-most powerful supercomputer on Earth.

The … Read more

Pricey supercomputers sold well in 2009

Though most of us had to watch our wallets last year, some didn't mind spending $3 million or more for a new supercomputer.

The overall market for high-performance computers (HPCs) and servers fell last year, bringing in sales of $8.6 billion, an 11.6 percent drop from $9.7 billion in 2008, according to the "Worldwide High Performance Technical Server QView" report released Wednesday by IDC. Shipments were down 40 percent from the prior year.

But one segment unfazed by the recession was the supercomputer. Sales of HPCs costing more than $3 million jumped by 65 … Read more

The new optimizations for capability computing

This is the time of year to take stock in where high-performance computing (HPC) sits and where it is headed. That's because the SC09 conference is taking place in Portland, Ore., this week and it's the biggest HPC conference around.

SC is an odd duck as conferences go. Last year it had more than 10,000 attendees and, yet, it's a largely volunteer-organized event in a world where trade shows of this scope are packaged by conference specialists or some specific corporation. Think the much-renamed LinuxWorld (run by IDG) or VMworld (run by VMware).

"SC&… Read more

Intel Labs Europe tackles large-scale computing

Intel Labs Europe is joining a handful of French institutions to investigate large-scale computing challenges that face today's information technology industry.

The Exascale Computing Research Center will investigate machines that can perform 1,000 times more calculations than today's top supercomputers, Intel said, and the chipmaker is spending millions of dollars on the three-year partnership.

The effort also includes Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif, and the Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Those organizations will jointly match Intel's investment, Intel said.

"France has taken a leading role in driving high-performance computing research … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: Supercomputers and the future of Hulu

Supercomputers are in the news again. First Microsoft has a new version of its Excel program that can tear spreadsheets that used to take weeks to calculate, down into a few hours. Then we've got results released early Monday that unveil which company gets to claim its supercomputer as the fastest among the top 500 in the world.

We also get CNET News senior writer Greg Sandoval on the phone to talk about what's going on with Hulu, and why it may soon cost you money to watch your favorite TV shows and movies on the popular site. … Read more

Upping the ante in the supercomputer stakes

This week's Supercomputing 2009 in Portland, Ore., puts the spotlight on the highest of high-end computing systems.

Intel unveils supercomputer chip, NEC partnership The chipmaker has disclosed a version of its Xeon processor line optimized for high-performance computing. The company also announces it's teaming up with NEC. (Posted in Nanotech: The Circuits Blog by Brooke Crothers) November 16, 2009 1:35 PM PST

Microsoft testing Excel for supercomputers At the SC09 conference, Microsoft releases an updated version of Windows Server for high-performance computers as well as a compute cluster version of its Excel spreadsheet. (Posted in Beyond Binary … Read more

Intel unveils supercomputer chip, NEC partnership

Intel on Monday disclosed a version of its Xeon processor line optimized for supercomputers and announced a partnership with NEC to develop future supercomputers.

At Supercomputing 2009 in Portland, Ore., Intel unveiled a future version of its "Nehalem-EX" processor optimized for supercomputers. The six-core chip will run at higher speeds than eight-core versions of the Nehalem-EX processors and will offer advantages for supercomputer specific tasks, Intel said in a statement. Intel also refers to supercomputing as high-performance computing, or HPC.

The chip architecture will offer greater memory speeds and capacity and will allow customers to build single computers … Read more