The global publication of record for High Performance Computing / October 1, 2004: Vol. 13, No. 39

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Features:

HIGH-END CRUSADER QUESTIONS IBM'S "FASTEST" COMPUTER CLAIM: Commentary from the High-End Crusader
The High-End Crusader rushes to provide some perspective for the report Wednesday that IBM's Blue Gene/L has narrowly surpassed the Earth Simulator on the Linpack benchmark. Unlike the HPCC Challenge benchmark suite, Linpack only provides performance estimates for programs with exceptional locality characteristics. This raises the question, what is a general-purpose parallel computer?
IBM TOPS EARTH SIMULATOR, BOASTS WORLD'S FASTEST COMPUTER: IBM announced that an IBM BlueGene/L supercomputer has surpassed NEC's Earth Simulator in Japan to become the world's most powerful supercomputer, according to the industry-standard LINPACK benchmark.
OSC EXAMINES GROWING FPGA MARKET WITH OCTOBER SYMPOSIUM: by Tim Curns, Editor
HPCwire's Tim Curns interviewed Kevin Wohlever, project director of the Ohio Supercomputer Center's new facility in Springfield, regarding the center's upcoming FPGA symposium and the growing importance of FPGA capability.
SUPERWOMEN AND SUPERCOMPUTING: GHC TO HIGHLIGHT ACHIEVEMENT: At the Grace Hopper Conference, over 600 of the world's most talented women technologists will come together to talk about their technical innovations as well as have dialogues with college students on how to advance their careers, become leaders, and inspire others.
HPC USER FORUM EXPLORES CURRENT STATE OF HPC: The HPC User Forum held its semi-annual meeting in Tucson last week and also described the agenda for the third U.S.-Europe dialogue meeting, to be held October 13, 2004 at CERN.
SENATE COMMITTEE GIVES $5 MILLION TO BACKUP NASA: The Senate Appropriations Committee has provided $5,000,000 from within funds projected for the Columbia project to upgrade the Goddard Space Flight Center's Center for Computational Science [NCCS] so that it serves as NASA's backup supercomputing center.

Cluster Computing:

DELL BOOSTS CLUSTER PERFORMANCE, EXTENDS TO 64-BIT APPS: Dell has enhanced the performance of its high-performance computing cluster (HPCC) platforms through packaged configurations of PowerEdge 1850 servers using Intel Xeon EM64T processors and support for larger Topspin InfiniBand switches and PCIe host channel adapters (HCAs).
APPRO DELIVERS HYPERBLADE LINUX CLUSTERS TO PARADIGM: Appro delivered four Appro HyperBlade Linux clusters consisting of 256- nodes/512 Intel Xeon processors followed by another cluster solution of 64-nodes/128 AMD Opteron processors to Paradigm, located in Houston, TX.
LINUX NETWORX, ANSYS REACH NEW COMPUTING HEIGHTS: In a joint effort with Linux Networx, ANSYS, Inc. has solved a structural analysis model with more than 10 million degree of freedom (10,501,650 DOF) within a 32-bit environment, making it possible for ANSYS customers to solve larger models on relatively low-cost hardware.
TERANOVA CLUSTER COMPUTES NSA ALGORITHM IN THREE WEEKS: TeraNova, a supercomputer clustering Bull NovaScale servers, has computed a collision for "SHA-0" code, a hash algorithm developed in the 1990s by the National Security Agency.

High Performance Ads:

Vendor Spotlight:

HP HALTS SALE OF INTEL'S ITANIUM-BASED WORKSTATIONS: Hewlett-Packard plans to discontinue the sale of workstations based on Intel's Itanium processors. HP's goal is to focus on chips capable of running both 32-bit and 64-bit software without moving to an entirely different architecture.
CRAY "STORMS" INTO PITTSBURGH: The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center has received $9.7 million from the National Science Foundation for the latest, most advanced Cray system.
SUN LAUNCHES SUN TECH, ACADEMIC RESOURCES INITIATIVE (STAR): Continuing its mission to provide access to technology and technical resources for higher education and K-12 schools and research institutions, Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the Sun(SM) Technology and Academic Resources (STAR) initiative.
MSC.Software ANNOUNCES RELEASES OF SIMOFFICE VPD PRODUCTS: MSC.Software Corp., a leading global provider of virtual product development (VPD) products including simulation software and services, announced the release of MSC.Software SimOffice products MSC.Nastran 2005, MSC.Patran 2005, MSC.ADAMS 2005, MSC.Marc 2005 and MSC.Dytran 2005.

Quote of the Week:

"The U.S. computing industry is still alive and well, and still capable of dramatic innovation."

Dave Turek, VP of Deep Computing, IBM

ENTERPRISE GRID COMES TO EMEA WITH EGA COMMITTEE

SUN INTRODUCES FIRST PAY-FOR-USE COMPUTING GRID

News Briefs:

Hardware

Software

Networking

Storage

General

Short Takes:

Product Watch:: Oracle Announces Special E-Business Suite.
LSI Brings PCI-X Host Bus Adapter To Channel.
SAS Launches High-Performance Forecasting.
Financial Update:: Hinditron Secures Order For Cray XD1.
Cisco Invests US $32M In China R&D Center.
Corporate Liaisons:: Emulex, Brocade Expand Partnership.
VeriSign Selects Solaris x86 OS.
People and Position:: Cray Appts Ly Pham, Ungaro Senior VPs.
ORNL's Green A Top Black Researcher.
MSC.Software Announces CFO Resignation.

HPCwire Job Bank

This Week's Career Opportunities From:
ClearSpeed Cray D.E. Shaw Group	HPTi LLNL LSU	ORNL OSU Tabor Comm.	TACC UMD UMN

Conferences & Events

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

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