Scotland wins WORLD RECORD as voters head to referendum polls [ Thu Oct 2 2014]

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*** HPC News ***

DataDirect Networks stuffs tricky GPFS file system into GS7K box
Easy-to-use, ready to run, raring to go
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/01/ddn_dresses_gpfs_up_in_appliance_clothes/

DataDirect Networks has bundled its GPFS parallel file system, which
uses GridScaler technology, into its GS7K appliance. The appliance can
use its WOS object storage as a huge back-end vault, which DDN hopes
will remove GPFS set-up complexity while preserving standardised NAS
access.

GPFS systems are known to be powerful but also tricky to set up and
operate. Bundling it into an appliance front end, which is simpler to
set up and run, while giving it transparent access to a WOS (Web Object
Scaler) object store inside a single logical namespace ticks many boxes
according to DDN, it being a high-performance (✓), scale-out (✓),
parallel file system(✓) easy-to-use appliance (✓).

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AMD, Oracle sweep their glasses off the table, ARM wrestle Hadoop for
the data center
64-bit Cortex-A57 takes on elephant in the room
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/01/amd_demos_hadoop_on_arm/

AMD thinks the future of the data center lies in the ARM processor
architecture, and it's betting that servers based on 64-bit ARMv8 will
be humming in racks near you sooner than you expect.

To prove it, AMD's Leendert van Doorn took to the stage at Oracle's
JavaOne conference in San Francisco to demo two ARM Cortex A57–based
servers running Hadoop, marking the first time that's been done
publicly.

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Dude, you're getting a Dell! Uni of Queensland adds AU$275,000 cluster
HPC for bio, engineering, nanotech
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/01/uq_adds_275k_dell_cluster/

The University of Queensland is the latest contributor to Australia's
academic high-performance computing boom, with a AU$275,000 ($238k)
cluster going live late in September.

Installed at the University's Australian Institute for Bioengineering
and Nanotechnology (AIBN), the new cluster has nine Dell PowerEdge
R620s. Each runs two Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz units with ten cores each and
128 GB of memory.

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Supercomputers: The Next Generation – Cray puts burst buffer tech,
Intel Haswell inside
Go faster, faster compute screamers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/30/cray_adds_haswell_and_burst_buffer_tech_to_supercomputer_line/

Cray has new XC40 and CS400 superduper computers using Haswell
processors and DataWarp burst buffer tech to keep the Haswell cores
crammed with data to process.

The XC40 goes twice the speed of the existing XC30, courtesy of its
Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 ("Haswell") processor, scaling past a million
cores. The architecture implements two processor engines per compute
node, with four compute nodes per blade. Blades stack in eight pairs
(16 to a chassis), and each cabinet can be populated with up to three
chassis, meaning 384 sockets per cabinet.

----

Ellison: Sparc M7 is Oracle's most important silicon EVER
'Acceleration engines' key to performance, security, Larry says
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/29/ellison_sparc_m7/

During his OpenWorld keynote on Sunday, Oracle CEO CTO Larry Ellison
took time out from talking up his company's cloud strategy to remind
the audience that the database giant is in the hardware business, too –
all the way down to the silicon.

Many of Oracle's "engineered systems" are powered by Intel processors –
and Intel president Renee James was Ellison's opening act on Sunday –
but the company is still investing in the Sparc processor technology it
acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010.

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ARMs head Moonshot bodies: HP pops Applied Micro, TI chips into carts
First 64-bit ARMv8 SoC emerges in ProLiant form, but it's not for
everyone
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/29/hp_takes_another_crack_at_arm_servers_with_moonshot_rollout/

HP taking another shot at its Project Moonshot by today announcing two
new ARM-powered servers, one 64-bit and the other 32-bit.

The US giant hopes its two new ProLiant models will live up to the
hype: for years now the ARM world has claimed the architecture will
provide high-density, power efficient systems for data centers.

----

Pawsey powerhouse schedules first projects
Petascale punters get busy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/29/pawsey_powerhouse_schedules_first_projects/

Pawsey's petascale powerhouse has gone through its commissioning
cycles, and its operators have announced that they've granted 90
million CPU-hours to the machine's first research users for the period
September to December.

Magnus, the eight-cabinet, 35,000-core Cray XC30, is based on Intel's
Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors and has 95 TB of memory. The Pawsey
Supercomputing Center installed the last upgrade to Magnus during
September, embiggening the iron to break the petaFLOP barrier.

----

Enough with the rack-grappling, kids. Try this MYSTERY app
Ultra Comprehensive ISC14 Cluster Comp Results - part 2
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/25/ultra_comprehensive_isc14_cluster_comp_results_part_zwei_two/

The organisers of the ISC Student Cluster Competitions (here's a quick
guide on how these HPC battles work) are a wily bunch. Theirs was the
first competition to throw a "mystery application" at the student
teams, forcing them to optimise an unfamiliar workload on the fly.

The teams only have a few hours to learn the mystery app and figure out
how to best deploy it on their clusters. The goal of the organisers is
to ensure that the students not only understand the named applications
in the competition, but that they also have the skills necessary to
install and then optimise a new application.

----

Rookie southies S Korea and S Africa prep for cluster-wrestling match
Students get to grips with HPC apps
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/23/can_the_souths_rise_again/

Rounding out the field for the recent ISC14 Student Cluster Competition
in Leipzig are two semi-experienced teams that both have "South" in
their names.

Even though Team South Africa and Team South Korea are separated by a
large amount of land and water, these two teams do have some things in
common.

----

Cherry Creek overflows with HPC goodness at Uni of Nevada
Switched in from Oregon
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/22/cherry_creek_overflows_with_hpc_goodness_at_uni_of_nevada/

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has signed a deal giving it access
to a year-old TOP500 and Green500 supercomputer, the Intel-built Cherry
Creek which has arrived at the city's Switch Supernap.

In a partnership with Switch, the university says it will be offering
the machine for private sector research as well as its own work on
medical, genomics, bioinformatics and climate research, as well as
molecular modelling and data analytics.

----

Students playing with impressive racks? Yes, it's cluster comp time
The most comprehensive coverage the world has ever seen. Ever
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/18/comprehensive_isc14_cluster_comp_championship_coverage/

This article and the ones following it are the most comprehensive and
in-depth analysis of a cluster competition that the world has ever
seen. If you can find better coverage, then I'll eat a handful of
spider webs.

Let's dive into the results from the benchmark and HPC application
portion of the ISC14 Student Cluster Competition....

----

Scotland wins WORLD RECORD as voters head to referendum polls
Uni of Edinburgh team lands teraflop-tastic LINPACK laurels
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/18/linpack_world_record_lands_in_scotland/

The LINPACK portion of the ISC'14 Student Cluster Competition (LINK)
was supposed to be routine, according to the cluster competition wise
guys. Sure, some student team might set a new record, but no one was
expecting the new mark to break through the 10 TFLOP/s barrier.

Almost everyone expected the LINPACK crown to go to one of the Chinese
powerhouse teams, or maybe the power mad Chemnitz team, or even
returning former champion South Africa.

----

A3Cube turns RAM up to 11 with FORTISSIMO kit
In-memory fabric comes to to HPC I/O project
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/18/a3cube_adds_inmemory_fabric/

A3Cube has fleshed out another part of its plans for high performance
interconnect, adding an I/O access system to the RONNIE data plane
technology it launched in February 2014.

As explained to El Reg when it hit, RONNIE provides direct, switchless
connection between nodes using PCIe NICs, claiming around 900
nanosecond latency between CPU, memory and I/O.

----


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