SC17 Beowulf Bash

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Written by Douglas Eadline

Published: 10 November 2017

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AKA The 2017 Beowulf Bash and Bowling Fete

The last time we visited Denver (SC13) we held the very popular “Physics of Spherical Newtonian Solids Smackdown” (a pool tournament). Because rolling spheres seems to be such a big hit in Denver, we decided to continue the tradition with a kind of bowling tournament! Yes, you read that correctly.

Sledgehammer HPC

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Written by Douglas Eadline

Published: 05 August 2017

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HPC without coding in MPI is possible, but only if your problem fits into one of several high level frameworks.

[Note: The following updated article was originally published in Linux Magazine in June 2009. The background presented in this article has recently become relevant due to the resurgence of things like genetic algorithms and the rapid growth of MapReduce (Hadoop) . It does not cover deep learning.]

Not all HPC applications are created in the same way. There are applications like Gromacs, Amber, OpenFoam, etc. that allow domain specialist to input their problem into an HPC framework. Although there is some work required to "get the problem into the application", these are really application specific solutions that do not require the end user to write a program. At the other end of the spectrum are the user written applications. The starting points for these problems include a compiler (C/C++ or Fortran), an MPI library, and other programming tools. The work involved can range form small to large as the user must concern themselves with the "parallel aspects of the problem". Note: all application software started out at this point some time in the past.

Open MPI Version 3.0 is Available

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Written by Douglas Eadline

Published: 13 September 2017

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From the Open MPI Team -- go team

The Open MPI Team, representing a consortium of research, academic, and industry partners, is pleased to announce the release of Open MPI version 3.0.0.

v3.0.0 is the start of a new release series for Open MPI. Open MPI 3.0.0 enables MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE by default, so a build option to Open MPI is no longer required to enable thread support. Additionally, the embedded PMIx runtime has been updated to 2.1.0 and the embedded hwloc has been updated to 1.11.7. There have been numerous other bug fix and performance improvements. Version 3.0.0 can be downloaded from the main Open MPI web site.

Julia Gets a Boost

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Written by Douglas Eadline

Published: 26 June 2017

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Julia Computing Awarded $910,000 Grant by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Including $160,000 for STEM Diversity (the following is based on a press release from Julia Computing)

Cambridge, MA – Julia Computing has been granted $910,000 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support open-source Julia development, including $160,000 to promote diversity in the Julia community.

The grant will support Julia training, adoption, usability, compilation, package development, tooling and documentation.

The diversity portion of the grant will fund a new full-time Director of Diversity Initiatives plus travel, scholarships, training sessions, workshops, hackathons and Webinars. Further information about the new Director of Diversity Initiatives position is below for interested applicants.

Julia Computing CEO Viral Shah says, “Diversity of backgrounds increases diversity of ideas. With this grant, the Sloan Foundation is setting a new standard of support for diversity which we hope will be emulated throughout STEM.”