Video: Swarm - Distributed Computation in the Cloud

Swarm: Distributed Computation in the Cloud from Ian Clarke on Vimeo.

Swarm is a framework allowing the creation of web applications which can scale transparently through a novel portable continuation-based approach. Swarm embodies the maxim "move the computation, not the data".

DLight - Utilize and Visualize the Power of DTrace Technology

In this video, Maria Tishkova demonstrates runtime profiling using DLight, which unifies application and system profiling using DTrace technology on Solaris platforms.

Sun Datacenter Switches are Business Ready

Marc Hamilton blogs on how Sun's HPC technologies are being adopted by the enterprise:

"Traditional High Performance Computing (HPC) customers continue to rapidly adopt the latest 40 GB/sec QDR InfiniBand technology delivered by the Sun InfiniBand Switch 648. Recently, Oracle put their weight behind Sun's QDR technology in Exadata v2, incorporating the Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36. Today, Sun further expands our family of high performance fabrics offering with the Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 72.

For the first time ever, the Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 72 lets you aggregate up to 72 QDR 4x ports into a single 1RU switch and multiple switches can be combined to cost effectively link up to 576 servers. For larger clusters, the Sun InfiniBand Switch 648 supports up to 648 servers with a single switch, or up to 5184 servers in a full non-blocking fabric using eight 648 port switches.

See all all InfiniBand products at : http://www.sun.com/products/networking/infiniband.jsp

Africa's Most Powerful Super

A new Sun HPC cluster has powered up at the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) in Capetown, South Africa:

"This was delivered in two stages: stage one consisted of one Sun Blade 6048 modular system with 48 Blades based on Intel Xeon E5450 processors, while stage two consisted of three Sun Blade 6048 modular systems that house 144 blades based on the next-generation Intel Xeon processor – codenamed "Nehalem". Full Story

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AMD Introduces Six-Core "Kroner" Server Platform

AMD has introduced a new server platform, along with the AMD platform specification code-named "Kroner," with a unified processor and chipset technology that furthers AMD's commitment to energy efficiency.

"Our focus is to deliver on the aspects of a server platform that directly impact the IT manager -- improved performance on key workloads and virtualization, and low overall power consumption," said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server and Embedded Business, AMD. "This new platform and the platform specification codenamed 'Kroner' allow our OEM customers to deliver unique solutions to solve a particular datacenter problem. And they can recognize development and time to market value because of the consistency and commonality across our product generations." Full Story

Sun Fire X4275 storage server review

ITPro reviews the Sun Fire X4275 storage server:

"The X4275 puts forward a strong proposition as a storage server as it has a high potential capacity and plenty of room to expand. Build quality is good, it comes with a solid three-year on-site warranty and power consumption isn’t excessive either." Full Story

Sun Fire X4275 storage server is now shipping. Try it free for 60 days.

Blue Sky Studios Deploys Sun Solution For Ice Age Sequel

Blue Sky Studios, a wholly-owned unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, deployed Sun Blade servers and Sun Ultra workstations for the rendering of its new animated feature Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, giving them four times better performance than their previous solution.

"Sun's collaboration with Blue Sky for this animated feature film was built on our innovative open network systems approach and our understanding of the HPC market, especially in a challenging economy," said Lisa Sieker, vice president of marketing, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. "The Sun Blade servers and Sun Ultra workstations deliver a compelling combination of performance and power efficiency that helped us beat out competitive offers."

Survey: What do you want from Fortran?

The Sun Studio Fortran team would like your input. Please visit take our brief survey on future needs and priorities. Your input is key to our planning and we value your feedback.

Thank you, and happy coding.
The Sun Studio Fortran Team.

Video: All About Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.1

In this video, Len Wisniewski presents on Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.1 at the HPC Consortium in Austin, Texas, November 2008.

The Sun HPC Consortium in Hamburg kicks off tomorrow. Watch this space for presentation videos on the latest HPC technologies from Sun and our partners!

OpenMP Workshop Presentations Online

Tutorial presentations are now online from the recent International Workshop on OpenMP. The IWOMP 2009 is an annual series of international workshops dedicated to the promotion and advancement of all aspects focusing on parallel programming with OpenMP. The workshop serves as a forum to present the latest research ideas and results related to this shared memory programming model. It also offers the opportunity to interact with OpenMP users, developers and people working on the next release of the standard.

To view the presentations, point your browser to the IWOMP Conference Site, click "Program" and then scroll down.

Video: SSD Turbocharges Your I/O Intensive Apps

In this video, Ray Austin discusses the performance advantages of flash technologies. Solid-State Drives (SSDs), or Flash drives, add value and savings when integrated in Sun Servers. Download now to read about it in the Business Value White Paper.

Video: Sun's NAND Flash Memory - Disrupting Storage

NAND Flash Memory in HPC | SC08 Disruptive Technologies Panel from hippster on Vimeo.

In this video, Michael Cornwell of Sun Microsystems discusses the disruptive effect of NAND flash memory in high performance computing. Recorded in November, 2008 at the SC08 conference.

Solid-State Drives (SSDs), or Flash drives, add value and savings when integrated in Sun Servers. Download now to read about it in the Business Value White Paper.

NEW: Lustre BoF and Q&A Sessions at ISC'09

Sun Microsystems is pleased to invite you to the following ancillary events at ISC'09 in Hamburg, Germany:

HPC Stack and Lustre BOF
Wednesday, June 24, 8:30am -10:00am,
Hamburg Congress Centre, Room 18

As Sun’s Lustre filesystem and the complimentary Sun HPC Stack evolve, a number of new features are planned to enhance functionality and scalability. These includes clustered metadata, petascale scalability, end to end data integrity using the Sun ZFS filesystem. Please join us for an overview of current features and new developments planned with these two Sun products.

HPC Stack and Lustre Engineering Q&A
1:30pm -4:00pm,
Hamburg Congress Centre, Room 18

Senior engineers Makia Minich of the HPC Stack team and Andreas Dilger of the Lustre team will review areas of technology they are currently working on, and take detailed questions from the audience.

The Coming Superbrain

Artificial intelligence is back in fashion, which raises the questions: Will computer intelligence surpass our own, and how quickly? Full Story

Welcome to the Sun HPC Portal on My Sun Connection

The Sun HPC Community Portal is a new website designed for information sharing and collaboration.

As part of this member-based community, Sun HPC users can engage with Sun engineers, partners, and fellow customers in real time.

Join today and engage with the Sun HPC Community!

White Paper: Synopsis EDA Solutions Featuring Lustre

This white paper focuses specifically on Synopsys EDA software tools, process flows, and compute resources used for the “Mask Data Preparation (or MDP)” process flow area of semiconductor manufacturing. (Synopsys product; CATS®). Often referred to as the critical link from design to manufacturing CATS is a software package which converts semiconductor design data into a useful format for making the circuit templates (also referred to as “photomasks”) for semiconductor manufacturing:

"Parallel file systems allow for the “striping” or spreading of files across multiple file servers. Note that this is in contrast to “clustered” file servers, where each server serves its own file system; parallel file systems serve the same files from multiple file servers, distributing the load. Lustre has an advantage over some other parallel file systems in that it is a native infiniband application. No context switches are needed for the CATS application to talk to Lustre storage via infiniband. This means that Lustre takes full advantage of the low latency and low CPU overhead of infiniband." White Paper download