The global publication of record for High Performance Computing / April 2, 2004: Vol. 13, No. 13

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Features:

SGI'S DAVE PARRY SPEAKS OUT ON PRODUCTION READY LINUX: by Mike Bernhardt
HPCwire interviewed SGI's Senior Vice President, Dave Parry, to get a better understanding of the adoption of Linux in the HPC community and his views on rolling Linux into "Prime Time."
EXPERT OPINION: THE COMING CRISIS IN COMPUTATIONAL SCI (III): by Douglass Post
In response to our March 12 column by the High End Crusader, HPCwire article #107185, US FUNDING PRIORITIES AND ROADMAPS FOR PETAFLOPS, Dr. D. E. Post has allowed us to publish a relevant paper he presented as part of the proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computer Architecture: Workshop on Productivity and Performance in High-End Computing, Madrid, Spain, February 14, 2004, Los Alamos Report LA-UR-04-0388
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: EXPLANATION FOR THE HIGH END CRUSADER: A reader clarifies his previous letter to the editor regarding the High End Crusader's 03.12.04 article, "US FUNDING PRIORITIES AND ROADMAPS FOR PETAFLOPS [#107185].
MICROSOFT EXEC CONCEDES WORST GOOF: When Microsoft Corp. entered the Internet browser war in the 1990s, Netscape Navigator was the early leader and Microsoft's Internet Explorer the late-blooming upstart. Now, it's gearing up for a similar battle in search technology.
DUKE CHEMISTS DESCRIBE NEW KIND OF NANOTUBE TRANSISTOR: Duke University researchers exploring ways to build ultrasmall electronic devices out of atom-thick carbon cylinders have incorporated one of these "carbon nanotubes" into a new kind of field effect transistor.
PURDUE DESIGNS 'SHAPE-SEARCH' FOR INDUSTRY DATABASES: Purdue University engineers have developed a system that will enable employees to search huge industry databases by entering a part that has a similar shape, sketching a part from scratch or modifying a part that has a similar three-dimensional shape.
BILL GATES SAYS HARDWARE WILL BE ALMOST FREE IN A DECADE: Hardware costs will fall sharply within a decade to the point where widespread computing with speech and handwriting won't be limited by expensive technology, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said on Monday.
PARIS-LODRON UNIVERSITY SALZBURG INSTALLS SCI-CLUSTER: Gaisberg is the name of an eye-catching mountain on the outskirts of Salzburg. Now, it is also the name of the new supercomputer which was installed in late 2003 at the department of Scientific Computing at the Paris-Lodron University Salzburg.

Cluster Computing:

SUN DELIVERS PRE-INTEGRATED CLUSTER FOR BIOINFORMATICS: To help customers save time and money in deploying an entry-level bioinformatics solution, Sun Microsystems and its iForce(SM) partners for life sciences are delivering the pre-integrated Sun FireStarter Cluster for Bioinformatics.
APPLE UPDATES CLUSTER TOOL: Apple's offering for scientific research and enterprise computing was improved when the company released Xgrid Preview version 2.
FOUNDRY ETHERNET TO POWER FIRST FLASHMOB SUPERCOMPUTER: Foundry Networks, Inc. announced that its industry-leading high- performance Layer 2/3 Ethernet switches will provide the network infrastructure for FlashMob I, a supercomputer to be created on April 3, 2004 by hundreds of volunteers using ordinary laptop PCs.
LINUX DATA CENTER FEATURES POLYSERVE CLUSTERING SOFTWARE: Classified Ventures, LLC, a strategic joint-venture among six large media partners, has turned to PolyServe Matrix Server shared data clustering software to enable a highly scalable, available and manageable deployment of Oracle9i Real Application Clusters.
U OF WUPPERTAL SELECTS PARASTATION FOR LINUX CLUSTER: ParTec AG announced that the University of Wuppertal, Germany, has chosen Parastation 4 as a cluster middleware package for it's new LINUX compute cluster "ALICEnext".
ASAP PROGRAM PARTNERS DRIVE CLUSTERING IN EUROPE AND ASIA: InfiniCon Systems announced that it has expanded its Authorized Solutions Alliance Providers (ASAP) Program, signing partnership agreements with four international companies to market and sell its InfinIO family of InfiniBand-based networking solutions.

High Performance Ads:

Vendor Spotlight:

HP POWERS FAST-GROWING 2003 INC. 500 COMPANIES: HP announced that five companies on the 2003 Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing, small, privately held businesses in the United States have deployed HP technologies designed for small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) with fewer than 1,000 employees.
SUN TO MAKE CHANGES IN OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGY, SAYS EXEC: A top official of Sun Microsystems has revealed that Sun will make fundamental changes in open source technology to be announced during a conference in Shanghai on June 2 and 3.
STRATHCLYDE U SCIENTISTS USE SGI TO DELIVER FASTER PROJECTS: Silicon Graphics announced that physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, will run a wide range of applications on a new SGI Altix 3000 supercluster which was installed in December 2003.
IBM PLANS FIRST OPENLY CUSTOMIZABLE MICROPROCESSOR: IBM outlined plans to openly collaborate and build a community of innovation around its Power microprocessor architecture used in a vast range of products from the world's most powerful enterprise systems and supercomputers to games and embedded devices.
GATEWAY, HARVARD LIFE SCIENCES FORM SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP: Harvard recently purchased ultra-dense technology from Gateway, Inc. to help its Life Science researchers conduct diverse projects in areas ranging from biochemistry to molecular evolution.

Quote of the Week:

"While open source may fill a useful role in specialized computing environments, open source does not translate to the mass consumer market for software. The mass consumer market is qualitatively different from other markets. It demands a much higher level of software engineering in order to provide the requisite ease of use, robustness and flexibility."

Tom Healy, research software engineer and
author of IPI report

News Briefs:

Hardware

Software

Networking

Storage

General

Short Takes:

Product Watch:: CA Delivers Support For Db2 For z/OS V8.
Actel Achieves Milestone With FPGAs.
Appro, United Devices, Voltaire Demo Products.
Financial Update:: Intel To Pay $225 Million To Settle Suit.
Corporate Liaisons:: Intel, Dell Sued Over SSE.
Leapstone, Sun Enter Services Agreement.
MLBAM Extends Contract With Sun.
People and Position:: Schmidt To Serve On E-Security's Board.
Procera Announces Saponas To Join Board.
Computer Associates Names Clarke CFO.

HPCwire Job Bank

This Week's Career Opportunities From:
Accenture Adaptec Altair ANU CDAC ClearSpeed	Comp. Assets Cray CSCS Indiana U Intel	LBNL NCSA Noesis OctigaBay PSC	RadStone SAIC Shaolin Micro U of Edinburgh U of Minn.

Conferences & Events

HPCwire notes events and highlights a complete listing of industry-related conferences, exhibitions, meetings, etc.

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