Julia: HPC BASIC

Published on Friday, 07 December 2012 14:00

Written by Douglas Eadline

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You really should meet Julia

A long time ago, BASIC was "the language" in the PC world. There were other languages of course, but BASIC was well, "basic" and it was the only thing beyond machine code for many early PC enthusiasts. The name was an acronym for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code." New users could easily start writing programs after learning a few commands. It was fun and easy. Many scientists and engineers taught themselves BASIC. Of course, many would argue at the time real scientific programs were written in BASIC's big brother FORTRAN, but FORTRAN was a different world in terms of development cycle and hardware. There was this thing called a compiler that had to be run before you could execute your program. BASIC on the other hand seemed to keep track of your code and would just "RUN" whenever you wanted. Of course you might get some errors, but the "edit, run, edit" cycle was rather short and allowed one to easily play with the computer.

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HPC Cloud Survey

Published on Friday, 26 October 2012 17:46

Written by Douglas Eadline

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The first and only Survey of HPC Cloud providers has been posted over at HPC-Admin magazine. The article surveys a whole raft of "cloud offerings" from many different companies. If you are unfamiliar with the idea of HPC cloud and are wondering if it is the next big thing, take a look at the recently posted, Will HPC Work In The Cloud?. Remember, we need the "Cloud" because the web is so last year.

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SC12: Not in Kansas Anymore

Published on Thursday, 06 December 2012 14:29

Written by Douglas Eadline

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Taking a starship to Oz and other SC12 observations

At long last, let the SC12 coverage begin. As a general rule here at Cluster Monkey we like to get our trade show coverage done before next years event in 2013. More in depth coverage will be presented in separate articles, but for now I would like to share some personal highlights from the show.

First, as always the Beowulf Bash was a great success. Despite not giving the exact location until the week before, many of those still hungry and thirsty after the Opening Gala headed over to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy themed party at Clark Planetarium. (more details here). In addition, to a darn good time and a chance to touch base with HPC friends, the party is a testament to the power of community. Twenty three vendors came together to support a party that began back at SC99 with just beer and pretzels. My only regret was that I was talking so much I forgot to take pictures. Thanks again to the lead sponsors Intersect360 and Adaptive Computing

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Details on Intel's Knights Corner

Published on Wednesday, 29 August 2012 15:32

Written by Douglas Eadline

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Is that anything like the Nights Watch?

Just read a very good article over at SemiAccurate that provides many details on Intel's Knight's Corner. In simple terms, Knights Corner, also known as the Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture is Intel's answer to NVidia and AMD/ATI GPU solutions for HPC. Pay attention to the software and MPI discussion at the end of the article. To add a some green perspective, you may also be interested in reading this blog post from NVidia.

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