Re: 26 amps?
Ahhh...damn it, I should have mentioned the voltage! We're talking 26 amps at standard US power of 110 volts. They have two 13 amp circuits they can draw from. Sorry for omitting that key fact and thanks for pointing it out to me.
Posts by danolds
156 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Nov 2009
How were your hols, cluster kids? Oh, partied, studied... did we mention WE BUILT DRONES
Cray turns cluster crank with ScaleMP
Thursday 3rd October 2013 17:32 GMT
Re: And still
I see what you mean, but I remember the days when we had SMP systems using buses and crossbars with flat flat access times (ie. non-NUMA). The system I'm most familiar with, the Sun E10000, had a 16x16 crossbar with 1.3 GB/sec bandwidth at about 550 ns latency. The E10k scaled like a scorched weasel (which is pretty good) when compared with the systems of that era.
Today, you can get 56Gb FDR Infiniband that offers 6.8 GB bandwidth at around 700 ns latency. That's not too bad at all, and should be enough to ensure reasonably linear scalability on a good portion of workloads.
In any case, a SMP system should be able to scale better than a cluster running message passing. While sitting here writing out this reply, I can't think of any application that would scale better in an MPP system vs. SMP, but I could be wrong.
Thursday 3rd October 2013 17:15 GMT
Re: And still
Yeah, very good point on that. And this solution should be a hell of a lot faster on those types of workloads vs. message passing on clusters. But we'll need to see some number to really know for sure.
I expect to see this kind of technology filter down into enterprise fairly soon. ScaleMP is part of the secret sauce in SAP's Hana in-memory analytics product set.
Server hack heads up the stack for a new challenge
Sunday 15th September 2013 05:28 GMT
End of an era
I've learned more from reading and talking with TPM than I ever learned in school. (Hmm...is this a comment on TPM's guru-like knowledge or the poor quality of my schooling? Maybe both?)
I'm glad that he's staying in the business and hasn't pulled up stakes to pursue his other interests. Some of you might know that Tim is a mean home brewer. (He's actually a mean everything, but what I mean in this case is that he has some serious brewing skills.) As he mentioned in the story above, he is a master of the holiday fruit cake. His 2012 edition won the prestigious Olds household "Best Mailed Food" award for that year.
I know that Reg readers will miss his heaping helpings of tech news and views. I'll reading him in The Reg as well.....
South African kids win global cluster glory at HPC fest
Tuesday 2nd July 2013 17:00 GMT
Re: Background or explanation
Here's the problem: there are now three major international student cluster competitions, each with 8+ teams, 5 or more apps, and three or more winners. I probably end up writing somewhere around 20-30 articles for each competition. I can't face a life where each and every one of these stories has to contain verbiage summarizing the entire competition. It would be way tedious to read and more tedious to write.
The solution? I wrote up a comprehensive guide to Student Cluster Competitions earlier this year. That article (here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/14/guide_to_student_cluster_compos/) explains pretty much everything you need to know about these events.
While that article isn't linked in each and every story, the stories that I have linked to do have a link to that original document. (Now that's a great sentence, very clear.) . So, like the other posters have said, if you're interested, check out the links - they have the details.
Tuesday 2nd July 2013 16:45 GMT
Re: Background or explanation
Hey Steve....I did write an article about the configurations, you can find it here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/24/isc_13_cluster_comp_configurations/
We didn't see any exotic cooling this year, although at least one team had signaled they might try for a liquid cooled box.
I'm going to do little deeper dive into the hardware, looking at node count, core counts, memory to core ratios, and whatever else looks interesting. Look for that soon.
Buff American beauties keen to dominate Euro youth in tech tussle
Friday 31st May 2013 16:44 GMT
Re: Colorado is also home to the NIST
I just finished an interview with a couple of WRF experts where we discussed the app and how to optimize it. I'll have a link to that interview in a near future blog post here.
If you're looking for past Student Cluster Competition results, you can find my articles by searching my name on The Reg, of course. This stuff goes back to 2010. If you're looking for all of it, you can also visit www.studentclustercomp.com - that's a new portal site we built to be a one-stop-shop for all things related to the Student Cluster Competitions.
Friday 31st May 2013 16:40 GMT
Re: Oh
That's a story I've been pitching to Reg editors for a few years now, plus additional coverage on other models who are trying to make their way in the rough and tumble world of HPC. In order to do this story justice, I'd need to travel to various locations and have the resources to blend into the world of the super model. So far, I haven't had any luck convincing them that: 1) this is a good story for The Reg and...2) that I'm the ONLY PERSON who can pull this off.
I'll keep trying, though.....
Speaking in Tech: Portland hipsters gagging for yesterday's web tool
Wednesday 22nd May 2013 18:37 GMT 
Yeah...Portland
As a long-time resident of the Portland tech suburbs, I've watched the city spiral down to the point where it can generate it's own field of hipness and pretentiousness without needing any inputs from outside the city limits. For the unitiated, take a look at any episode of the TV series Portlandia....while it's put forward as a comedy, it's much closer to a documentary.
Creative Suite cloud lurch crushes beret-wearers' cost-slash bid
Thursday 9th May 2013 18:34 GMT
Guess I'm the exception....
..but Adobe gained me as a customer with this package. I run a small business and found that I needed Premiere, Photoshop, Audition, and Illustrator to do our videos and other projects. I had a definite need, but couldn't quite justify spending $1,500 for the Premium Product suite or just buying a few of the products ($650 for Premiere, $600 for PS, $500 for Illustrator, and $350 for Audition).).
For $50 per month, I get access to all of these products plus everything else I would ever need. I also get support and won't have to shell out more $$ for upgrades.Over the time I've been with the program (about a year now), they've added more products to my subscription, some useful to me, some not.
Before Creative Cloud, I used point products (Adobe PS/Prem Elements, Audacity, others) and was constantly frustrated at what I couldn't do with them and the amount of time to get over several learning curves.. The Adobe products are extremely high quality and are well integrated. This has saved me a lot of time and I've been much happier with the results.
On a straight financial basis, my $1,500 outlay would pay for 30 months of Creative Cloud subscriptions, so I would be in the hole on the 31st month of my subscription. But to me, paying $50 per month for everything I need, no charge upgrades, and support is well worth it. And if I find a better alternative, I can convert anything I produced with Adobe to a different format and use it in whatever software I end up using.
Without the Creative Cloud, I wouldn't be an Adobe customer....
Red-hot students, an all-day romp and an £11,000 bonanza
Nvidia Tesla bigwig: Why you REALLY won't need x86 chips soon
Tuesday 23rd April 2013 18:14 GMT
Re: What he really means is...
But you're forgetting that the Keppler feature set brings a lot to the table, features/capabilities that will allow service providers to serve up games online that have performance and latency that are console-like. They probably won't be able to offer up enough performance to satisfy the hard core PC gamer, but, over time, will certainly be able to compete successfully vs. xBox, PS, and Wii on both quality and cost. And those service providers will be buying Kepplers by the boat load to make this happen.
Eerie satnav boffinry claims it can predict THE FUTURE
Wednesday 17th April 2013 17:22 GMT
Bewitched by trolls....
They switch street signs around the wrong way, change traffic patterns, and the like....which makes it difficult to learn your exact route right away. The only sure way to defeat their efforts is to continually chant a 'Spell of Clarity' while you're driving - which makes it hard to hear the radio.
Industry upstart: You know what high-end HPC needs? More DAY-GLO
Wednesday 17th April 2013 07:49 GMT
Re: One of theese days...
Back to shoulder stablized TAPE camcorders? Damn, I'd hate to have to lug around something that size, plus it would be more cumbersome to edit on the road.
I'll use the monopod first and see how that works. I'm using the Adobe Creative Suite and can try using the feature that removes camera jitter in either Premiere or AfterEffects. But I appreciate you taking the time to give me advice on it.
Thursday 11th April 2013 18:48 GMT
Re: Wow...great stuff
See my comment about, re: "Damn it, I wasn't using a mobile phone!"....After replying to Christian's comments above, I went back and looked at how YouTube handled the shakiness. To me, it looks like it kept doing small zooms in and out to adjust for camera motion. I know that I didn't zoom all that much and definitely didn't make the small in's and out's that seem to be on the video now. Excuses aside, I do really appreciate the feedback and will try to improve the quality.
I also appreciate your comments on the 4k class projectors. I was at another vendor event last week and they recorded the proceedings in 4k. The camera man told me that shooting in Red actually consumed 6x the storage of 1080p (I had expected it to be 4x larger) and filled his hard drive equipped camera pretty fast. But what an image!
Thursday 11th April 2013 18:31 GMT
Re: One of theese days...
Damn it, I didn't use a mobile phone! I used a Cannon HFM300 on this one. But, that said, I think the auto image stabilization might have been 'off' rather than 'on'. That, plus the fact that I was drinking huge amounts of coffee throughout the day AND kicking my heroin habit at the same time, probably combined to make this video a bit shakier than others. What's funny is that when I uploaded it to YouTube, it asked if I wanted it to take out the shakiness. I said yes, but only watched a few minutes to see if it was posted correctly. I wonder if they magnified my natural jitter somehow?
It's pretty clumsy and cumbersome to carry a tri-pod around a crowded tradeshow floor, but I think I found the solution - the monopod. I'll use it at the upcoming ISC'13 show and see how it works.
63 TRILLION maths ops a second - in 5 inches? Mm, show me
GE shows off tank-tough tech
Thursday 11th April 2013 00:40 GMT
Re: "Do you have employees who habitually bust up perfectly good tech?"
I tried that once...figured I'd get a shiny new laptop to replace the horrible clunker I was using. It sort of worked, but the ordering/delivery process took so long that I had to use a crappy loaner for several months. By the time my shiny new laptop arrived, I had taken a job at another company.
Wednesday 10th April 2013 17:48 GMT
Re: Bored
Actually, it was kind of a funny moment, which is why I included it in the video you didn't watch. I also put in a few seconds of landscape time lapse footage to convey the sense of time passage. It was a tour de force of video wizardry. I'm so sorry you missed it, but I'm glad you took the time to let us know that it bored you. It's useful feedback and much appreciated.
Wednesday 10th April 2013 17:03 GMT
Re: See, that's the benefit of a UK sixties education...
My US education in the seventies did cover the metric system but no one figured that we'd ever convert from F to C. The GE guys said the same thing to me as you mention above about working with low mass components. On the 'only -40C, 85C and 40G' point. These guys are building milspec hardware and I wouldn't be surprised if the public specs they disclose vary significantly from true capabilities. There could also be another line of equipment that's engineered to higher specs that they don't take to public trade shows.
Dell: Shhh, don't tell a soul, but the PC sector ISN'T doomed...
Friday 8th February 2013 19:26 GMT
Re: Microsoft $$ infusion in Dell
Don't get me wrong...I don't think MS is doing anything for Dell out of the kindness of their collective hearts. MS is going to get a pretty good return on their money for this loan. Also, while banks are now saying that money from MS isn't necessary, we don't know when MS was approached or when they jumped into the deal. I don't know for sure, but I would bet that MS was approached early on, before the other financing was in place, but I could be wrong.
And, sure, MS is going to try to steer Dell into a MS-only product strategy. But giving the loan doesn't give them the formal power to force the issue.
The business mullet: Cool or tool?
Friday 8th February 2013 19:17 GMT 
Can't pull it off
It IS possible to pull off the business mullet (jeans + sport or suit jacket) and look good, but I've only seen it done once or twice. I'd never attempt it myself - just don't have the stones. But I did draw a line in the sand years ago when I decided to only wear ties for funerals or formal weddings. For business meetings, the most formal I'll go is a dress shirt, suit coat, and Dockers.
Goldman Sachs: Windows' true market share is just 20%
Thursday 13th December 2012 06:55 GMT
Re: Ms hate
The thing that many seem to overlook is that there are usually good and valid reasons why firms buy technology that some seem to think are archaic. You, and others, seem to be holding up the mainframe as an example of a stupid buying decision. But even today, there are things that mainframes can do that other systems can't do as easily or as inexpensively. The same follows for commercial Unix's too. Unix based system running AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris are highly integrated solutions that do things and have characteristics that can't be duplicated in Linux or other alternatives without a lot of clunging, cost, and risk. Smart phones don't have the same functionality as tablets and tablets can't do the same kind of work as efficiently as laptops. And there aren't any laptops that can handle the same power-hungry chores that come easy to a beefy desktop or workstation.
My main contention is that these competiting technologies aren't exact substitues for each other. Implying that an organization or individual is somewhat thick if they buy a mainfram, commercial Unix box, Windows based systems, or whatever technology you happen to NOT be in love with at the moment is provacative and makes for a fun flame war. But it doesn't have anything to do with the reality that tech decision makers wrestle with daily.
All-female code-crunching boffin team aims for cluster compo glory
China tries for 2012 WORLD cluster compo DOMINATION
Scraggly student veterans bid for SC12 victory
Tuesday 6th November 2012 20:13 GMT
Re: 703 Gigaflops
Maybe, but maybe not. When I'm covering the Student Clustering Competitions at the SC events, I've had some opportunities to use their wired network connections late at night when no one else is around. I was amazed at how quickly my videos uploaded and decided to run some network speed tests. What I found is that I could max out almost every internet speed test I could find. If I remember correctly, the download speed I was seeing was close to the max speed of the spinning hard drive in my laptop. Damn, I should have captured a screen shot...I'll try to do so this year.
Anyway, my point is that you'd kill them by having much less network latency than they have. That was a damned long tangent to get to that simple point, wasn't it?
Two Texan teams tool up, ride out to enormo cluster shootout
Tuesday 6th November 2012 19:58 GMT
Re: "They’re just like Fight Club, but with much more math."
I'm really glad to hear that you enjoy the coverage of the Cluster Competitions, thanks for the comment - it made my day (so far at least).
I've shot and posted quite a bit of video covering the cluster competition at SC10, SC11, and ISC12. A quick search on El Reg using my name and/or cluster competition should pull it up. All of it is also up on YouTube too. I'm going to shoot more this year and you'll see it here first. Thanks again for the comment, it's much appreciated....
Olympics is over, prepare for a COMPUTER SPORTS SMACKDOWN
Monday 5th November 2012 18:29 GMT 
Oops...yeah, volts
Sorry about that...yeah, it's 120 volts and 26 amps, single phase. I should have put that in the article. Not sure about the number of Raspberries that can drive, but that comment reminds me of a stupid idea I tried to sell some of the teams on: Use a stationary bike to charge a bank of laptop batteries for that extra jolt of juice when you need it. I don't think there's anything in the rules to prohibit this, but haven't done any calculations to figure out if there's any conceivable way this could work.
Software disaster zone Knight Capital bags $400m lifeline
Wednesday 8th August 2012 17:56 GMT
Exactly right
I should hit this point harder in the article(s). Knight isn't a firm that trades to make money. They aren't a hedge fund or anything like that. They don't take on much risk, they execute trades on behalf of other brokerages. They're a cog in the big financial services machine and, as 'I Ain't Spartacus' (great name, btw) put it, they make their money by being useful.
To me, this is a major reason why this story is so interesting and chilling at the same time. These guys aren't taking a lot of risk, not doing anything that's wildly or even mildly speculative - they were just testing out a new trading package. And in less than 45 minutes, an IT error almost took down their entire company to the tune of a $440 million loss. That's gotta give anyone in IT pause.
German KIT v Fighting Seawolves in student cluster deathmatch
Friday 15th June 2012 18:54 GMT
Re: FPGA's FTW
Hey Brian....I hadn't thought of FPGA's - that's a very interesting idea, but the problem might be tuning or recompiling apps to take advantage of them. I'll ask the team coaches and competition organizers about it. The winners in the SC version of the competition in Seattle were fairly GPU heavy and it paid off for them.
I'll be sure to post as much of their actual configurations as I can get my hands on. That'll probably be up on Monday or Tuesday.
Newbie German team 3-to-1 fave in cluster building compo
Thursday 14th June 2012 20:40 GMT
Re: Seriously, nobody gets that joke
Are you talking about the headline of the article? If you are, you're not alone - I didn't get the joke either. What's sad is that I wrote the damned article...lol. I'd hope that I'd get whatever joke they use for the headline. While I've watched a lot of Brit TV here in America - I guess I haven't watched enough or watched it closely enough.
Thursday 14th June 2012 20:34 GMT
Re: Dumb*ss
Dude? Do you really want me to explain the entire competition every time I write one of these stories. There are links in each of these articles that take you to other articles that profile the teams, explain the apps they'll be running, and outline the entire competition. A couple of the links might lead to some really really nasty porn sites, but those would have gotten in by mistake.
Students face off in Hamburg home-cooked cluster clash
Tuesday 12th June 2012 17:09 GMT
Re: @ukaudiophile - omission?
I wrote an article last year with the idea of taunting the UK (and Europe) into sending teams to Seattle for the 2011 SC version of the contest, but it didn't work. (Here's the story: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2011/03/21/scc_deadline/). It didn't seem like readers were too keen on it either, with comments that missed the point in various ways. One reader thought that researchers would rather do research, which is correct - but these are student teams. Another thought it was a waste of money for the universities even though it's vendor sponsors who pay the expenses for the teams. It's interesting and instructive to see China and Taiwan embrace these competitions so fervently, isn't it?
Germany's KIT drives hot-shot boffins to Klusterkampf
Wednesday 30th May 2012 19:03 GMT
Re: Alpine hats?!?!?
You can easily drive to mountains from Karlsruhe in less than a day, don't you think? Besides, an Alpine hat isn't just for mountaineering anymore - they're a fashion statement that adds just the right stylish touch to any outfit. In fact, the couture houses are currently adding lines of Alpine hats for their next winter collections. Wait and see, the Alpine hat wil soon be the newest 'must have' accessory. I'm already on the bandwagon and am getting lots of attention for it over here....
Wednesday 30th May 2012 18:48 GMT
"All going well..." and "Not the best of boasts" Really?
So how many software companies have you founded and built to the point where they employ more than 50,000 people plus earn more than $17 billion in revenue and more than $4 billion in profits? Moreover, they've been successful for 40 years. Is that such a bad thing or something to be ashamed of?
Student cluster warriors to face off on new battlefield: ISC
Will Nvidia 'n' pals pwn future gaming?
Tuesday 22nd May 2012 19:34 GMT
Yes, I agree with what you're saying...but....I think that much of the success will be based on how they price it. If they get the pricing right, it will carve off a chunk of casual gamers. But if it's the actual broadband suppliers who host and run the service, they'll have plenty of pricing flexibility. If the per-minute fees are low enough, it'll be kind of like the insidious app market - where some people (few) actually spend less, but most tend to pay more over time - but in tiny bits, but getting much more convenience out of it.
Regardless, this isn't aimed at the devoted gamer - at least not initially. It'll make inroads with more casual gamers first.
Tuesday 22nd May 2012 18:50 GMT
Re: Meh
Good points on the latency and bandwidth issues. One of the presenters from GaiKai (a hopefull online game provider) said that when he pitches service providers (like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T in the US), he always asks them "so how much money do you make when customers play with their xBox or PS3 systems?" The answer is, of course, zero. And that's the key. This could give those providers the ability to provide a fast, high bandwidth gaming solution to their customers. If they price it right, it could go a long ways towards keeping people on the cable box and stopping them from going entirely to the net for their in-home entertainment.
Tuesday 22nd May 2012 18:44 GMT
Re: Sir
There was another slide in the presentation that might clear this up. I'll describe it (briefly) here: Starting at the data center, it shows a latency of 60 ms for four frames processed. Then an additional 30 ms latency (for two frames) labled as the "IP Network". Then client latency of 30-60 ms for these same two frames. Summing it up, there's a total of between 120-150 ms total latency in the chain.
So the chart in the article does include internet latency - not just client and server numbers. Hope that helps clear this up....
NVIDIA VGX VDI: New tech? Or rehashed hash?
Monday 21st May 2012 18:47 GMT
Player mods?
That's a point that I didn't consider and it's a good one. There isn't much room in this new model for players to get their hands on code and make modifications - at least initially. However, consider this - down the road, why wouldn't (or couldn't) the service provider and game designer give players a mechanism where they can mod code and then play it? They might want to get more $$ from it, of course, or maybe it could be that it's a competitive advantage for them to do it. It's possible - but probably won't happen right out of the gate....unfortunately....
Monday 21st May 2012 18:39 GMT
Re: Critical Path
Good point about the LAN/WAN considerations. There wasn't an opportunity during the event to grill them about the specifics of the connection, although I agree that they're the key. From what I understood, the game was hosted on Gaikai servers located somewhere in the valley.
I think you're right, that this is definitely a game changer for render farms and probably for enterprise IT as well. It might also be a substitute for some portion of the game console market too. Time will tell...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
