Site News

News about site issues lives here. Contests, updates, poll results, and you name it show up in this category. We'll also keep you informed about our public appearances so you can camp out the night before to be the first in line.

Insert silly Cloud metaphor here

Cloud seems to be all the buzz right now. So what are you plans for Cloud HPC? Let everyone know by clicking to the right. The previous poll was Are you using GPUs for your applications? We had 138 responses and the leading answer was "Want to try but don't know how to get started." This result could be due to the programming barrier presented by GP-GPUs. It seems 33% of the total respondents had moderate or great success with GP-GPU. Interestingly, 21% just want "cores not GPU." If the "don't know how to get started" crowd were removed, then we have 81 remaining respondents. Of those 57% (46) had general success with GPU. The remaining respondents ("little success with GPUs" and "want cores") totaled 43% (35) and can be assumed outside the GPU camp. Thus, a simple conclusion, GPU seems to be working for over half the HPC market. Of course this conclusion is a guess. Consult professionals for better results.

The new poll, to the right, asks What are your plans for external Cloud HPC . Finally, we have many other poll topics that you may find interesting. Past polls and other links to surveys can be found on our Survey and Poll page. As always, these are not scientific polls. The results are always kind of cloudy.

Contribute your opinion and be rewarded with knowledge (or not)

Let's have a new poll. I just closed the previous poll, How would you use a 48 core PC (4P with 12 core Magny-Cours) next to your desk? . The response was good. Almost forty percent of the respondents said "I would run all my applications on this machine (both parallel and sequential)," while twenty two percent responded with "I would use both this machine and a big cluster for my applications." Not surprising based on my previous survey on numbers of cores. About 15% said it depends on the details.

The new poll is on Are you using GPUs for your applications? is return to a previous poll (Are you using/considering GPU accelerated applications?) I am curious to see how much uptake there has been over the past two years.

Finally, we have many other poll topics that you may find interesting. Past polls and other links to surveys can be found on our Survey and Poll page. As always, these are not scientific polls. Were just monkeying around.

From the "other" department

First things first, I put up a new poll. For me, it an intriguing question that reflects a shift in technology: How would you use a 48 core PC (4P with 12 core Magny-Cours) next to your desk? Does ti mean the end to your cluster use? While you are at it, you may want to think about what you would do with 16 cores under your desk? By the end of the year many people will start making this decision with their wallets. As always, past ClusterMonkey polls can be found here.

Now for a bit of shameless self promotion.

I have been writing quite a lot about clusters and HPC, but it has not landed on ClusterMonkey! Not to worry, I have plenty of ClusterMonkey exclusive content in the pipeline. So what do I recommend? Well, let's start with two articles at HPC Community:

  • The Ethernet Cluster - discusses some issues and standards for the upcoming 10 GigE cluster. Yes, there will be 10 GigE clusters, lot's of them.
  • The Cluster Decade - provides a retrospective for the last ten years and discusses why clusters steam rolled everything in sight (almost), but still have challenges.

Moving over to Linux Magazine, I usually write a column each week, but the other week I wrote one I think everyone should read. I'll give you a hint it is about toasters, no HPC needed. If you want to keep abreast of what I write on Linux Magazine sign up for the HPC newsletter.

And finally, I don't know if mentioned it here previously, but I am on twitter. I'm probably the worst at posting things to twitter, so if you do the twit thing, you can read for my low frequency tweets about new articles or news I find particularly interesting (and nothing about my social life, that should tell you something)

Final Exams are just around the corner

It is time to update the poll. In order to get a large sample size, I let the What is the range of cores you use for MPI jobs ? run for a long time. The results are not un-surprising considering other surveys of this type. The first big news is that 55% or users use less that 32 cores. Remind me why we worry about the Top500 again? Perhaps it is that 30% of the respondents that use more than 128 cores. The rest, well it seems there is dearth of applications (15%) that use between 32 and 128 cores.

The new poll is on How Long Do Your Applications Run ? (approximately) I have always wondered about this question and have not seen this as part of many surveys. I know there are applications that run for weeks, but I wonder how much time most applications actually require.

Finally, we have many other poll topics that you may find interesting. Past polls and other links to surveys can be found on our Survey and Poll page.

At long last, a new poll question about compilers. The question was prompted by a surprising post on Joe Landman's Scalbility.org. The GNU 4.x series seems to be performing surprisingly well -- in one test at least. Update: Joe has posted Fortran results.

The previous poll asked about cluster education. It seems there is a need for everything cluster these days with an emphasis on construction and design techniques. The number of respondents was a record 703! (of course if you do not change the poll question for half a year...) Past polls and other links to surveys can be found as part of our Cluster Links page.

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