Sun HPC Newsletter for August

The August edition of the Sun HPC Newsletter is out. Don't miss an issue--Subscribe today!

Hedge Funds And HPC

As we approach the annual High Performance on Wall Street event, this excerpt from Business Knowledge for IT in Hedge Funds sheds some light on how HPC is used in the financial sector:

"Currently, there is intensive competition among hedge funds and with other financial markets for a slice of the credit derivatives market. To achieve this, a great deal of consideration should be given to scalability across business processes, which may provide a competitive edge. HPC is a veritable technology that is an enabler for scalability and faster pricing of existing and new types of exotic derivatives." Full Story

Posted by Rich Brueckner [HPC Article of the Day] ( August 30, 2009 05:00 AM ) Permalink | Comments [0]

Video: Distributed Memory and MPI Programming Models

In Module 5 of the Intro to Parallel Programming Series, Ruud van der Pas presents on parallel programming models including distributed memory and MPI.

Video: Parallel Programming Basics

In Module 4 of the Intro to Parallel Programming Series, Ruud van der Pas presents on parallel programming basics.

Product Review: Sun Fire X4270/4275

ZDNet reviews Sun's latest Nehalem servers:

"Sun’s new Xeon 5500 lineup is pretty impressive, starting with an unusual low-cost 1U server (the Sun Fire X2270) with a restricted specification for those on a budget . Higher up the scale comes a more configurable up-market 1U offering (the X4170) aimed, primarily, at HPC buyers. For this review we're concentrating on the 2U space where Sun, again, has two models to choose from." Full Story

Iowa State Replaces IBM with Sun HPC

Iowa State University has replaced their IBM Blue Gene/L system with "Cystorm," a Sun HPC Cluster with 3200 processor cores:

""Cystorm is going to be very good for data-intensive research projects," Aluru said. "The capabilities of Cystorm will help Iowa State researchers do new, pioneering research in their fields." Full Story

Posted by Rich Brueckner [HPC Article of the Day] ( August 25, 2009 05:00 AM ) Permalink | Comments [0]

Comparing MPI and OpenMP

Douglas Eadline writes in Cluster Connection that the hardware environment may determine the best parallel programming tool to use:

"Another method to express parallelism is OpenMP. Unlike MPI, OpenMP is not an API, but an extension to a compiler. To use OpenMP, the programmer adds “pragmas” (comments) to the program that are used as hints by the compiler. The resulting program uses operating system threads to run in parallel. Operating system threads can be thought of as separate subroutines running at the same time that share the same memory space. In addition to the fact that “MP” is in both the names of these methods, there is often some confusion about how each of these parallel paradigms works and where/when they should be applied. This article will explain the differences and provide a better understanding of these two powerful technologies." 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.

Whitepaper: Architectural Strategies for Cloud Computing

Those guys over at Oracle have just published a white paper on Architectural Strategies for Cloud Computing:

"For IT departments in larger enterprises, developing a private cloud often makes the most financial and business sense. When developing the architectural vision, an enterprise architect should bear in mind the characteristics of cloud computing as well as consider some of the organizational and cultural issues that might become obstacles to the adoption of the future state
architecture. When moving ahead, decisions must be made on whether the future-state technical architecture should emphasize compatibility with the current standard or start from scratch to minimize cost. Future state systems architecture designs involve trade-offs between lower cost/operational efficiency and greater flexibility. Using an Enterprise Architecture framework can help enterprise architects navigate these trade-offs and design a system that accomplishes the business goal." Download White Paper

Screencast: Flash Technology in HPC, Let the Revolution Begin

The inexorable availability of ever more CPU cores, and even more GFLOPS per core, mean HPC application performance will no longer be restricted by the CPU - but by getting data into and out of these fast processors. I/O has always lagged behind computation, being ultimately dependent on disk drives throttled by rotational rates limited by mechanical physics. With an exponential growth spurt of peak GFLOPs available to HPC system designers and users, the CPU performance to I/O gap will reach increasingly gaping proportions.

To bridge this gap, Flash is being deployed in HPC environments as a revolutionary technology that delivers faster time to solution for HPC applications at significantly lower costs and lower power consumption than traditional disk based infra-structures.

View this one of a kind eSeminar panel discussion to discover more about flash technology from Sun Microsystems, Verari Systems, Fusion-io and Spansion. Hear first hand from these CTO's about flash technology and what it could do for your HPC environment. Launch Webcast

Screencast: HPC Storage and the Lustre File System

In this screencast you will learn about an implementation of the Sun Lustre file system as a scalable storage cluster using Sun Fire servers, high speed/low latency InfiniBand interconnects, and additional networking and storage devices. In addition, we will explore the use of the Sun Lustre file system at a shared government/education research site, including configuration information and details on testing that was performed on-site to evaluate the performance of Sun’s Lustre Storage System.

To learn more, check out the new whitepaper entitled: "Lustre File System: High-Performance Storage Architecture and Scalable Cluster File System."

SC09 August Newsletter

The SC09 Newsletter for August is out with these headlines:

* Intel Senior Fellow to Deliver Opening Address
* Housing and Tech Program Registration Open
* Broader Engagement Travel Grants Extended
* Broader Engagement Travel Offer to End August 17
* Submit Your Network Technologies to Xnet Now
* Student Volunteer Applications Due August 31
* Workshops Offer Diverse Topics to Complement SC09
* SC09 Bandwidth Entires Now Due September 19
* Storage Challenge to Notify Finalists August 17
* Apply Soon to Make Education Program Deadlines

Agenda Published: Sun HPC Virtual Trade Show, Sept. 17

The Sun HPC Virtual Trade Show has just published their agenda. Keynote speakers include Sun's Andy Bechtolsheim and Marc Hamilton, with additional talks from the Council on Competitiveness, Intel, Univa UD, and Clemson's CU-CCMS Center.

Video: Who will benefit most from the Cloud?

At the OpenSource World event in San Francisco, Lew Tucker, vice president and CTO of cloud computing at Sun Microsystems, explained that many developing countries are skipping over acquiring their own servers and going right to the cloud. Because of the cost effectiveness, the move may spur their economies and create jobs. This could also hold true for the U.S. government, currently creating its own cloud as well.

Sun Technologist Urges Flash Industry to Adopt NAND SSDs

At the recent Flash Memory Summit, Michael Cornwell, lead technologist for flash memory at Sun, urged the industry to adopt or emulate Sun's NAND flash module strategy for high-end servers:

"During a frank and sobering keynote address at the Flash Memory Summit here, he said NAND vendors are going down the wrong path by racing each other in process technology--at the expense of customer needs. Few sub-50-nm parts are suitable for the high-end computing or enterprise market, due to reliability and endurance issues, he said. So, OEMs like Sun are looking to devise flash-based systems using trailing-edge but more reliable NAND, but the trouble is that those type of parts are in short supply, he said." Full Story

Sun hails rise of self-scaling software

At this week's CloudWorld conference, Lew Tucker described Sun's vision of a world in which web applications can scale up their own hardware resources:

"As we look into the future, we're going to see that applications are going to be increasingly responsible for self-provisioning," Sun's cloud-computing chief technology officer told a sparsely attended CloudWorld conference in downtown San Francisco this morning. "As a computer scientist, I think that is an area of cloud computing that's most interesting. Full Story

Screencast: Thread Analyzer - Detecting Multithreaded Programming Errors

In this screencast, Xi Qian demonstrates how to detect data races and deadlocks in multithreaded applications.

Screencast: DLight - Utilize and Visualize the Power of DTrace Technology

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

Announcing the Sun HPC Community Wiki

Sun has launched a new HPC Community Wiki. The collaborative site features the latest news, blogs, forums, user polls, and other activities happening around high performance computing at Sun Microsystems.

"The Sun HPC community is very active with in-person meetings like the Sun HPC Consortium, SC09, and the upcoming HPC Workshop in Germany," said Rich Brueckner, Sun's HPC Community Manager. "What the Wiki gives us is a place to share information and collaborate during the rest of the year."

Posted by Rich Brueckner [HPC Article of the Day] ( August 12, 2009 05:00 AM ) Permalink | Comments [0]

Screencast: Performance Analyzer - MPI Application Profiling

In this screencast, Yukon Maruyama demonstrates profiling of distributed MPI applications using Sun Studio.

Live Webinar: Top HPC Use Cases in Life Sciences, Aug 27

Seminar title: Top HPC Use Cases in Life Sciences
Date: 8/27/09
Time: 12:00 pm EST

Learn from the experts how best to apply cutting edge high-performance computing techniques - such as cloud clustering and multi-core optimization - in a life sciences environment. This webinar will address the top use cases cited by our customers. Join Sun, Univa and eXludus for this one-hour live webinar. Register Now

Video: Parallel Architectures

Sun continues its video series: Introduction to Parallel Programming with this third segment on parallel architectures.
Module 1: Performance Tuning
Module 2: Multicore Processor Architectures

Screencast: Sun Studio Software: Developing OpenMP 3.0 Applications

Sun Studio 12u1 includes improved binary application performance, full OpenMP 3.0 support, profiling of distributed MPI applications, unified application and system profiling using Solaris DTrace technology (DLight), a new standalone graphical debugger (dbxTool) and much more!

In this screencast, Bin Fan demonstrates building, debugging and profiling an OpenMP 3.0 application, which utilizes OpenMP 3.0 tasking. Launch Screencast

Sun Guide to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a popular buzzword—but what does it really mean, and why should you care? Get this free guide to cloud computing and let us help you make sense of the hype. You probably know generally how cloud computing provides an economical, scalable and flexible approach to your IT infrastructure, but you probably don't know exactly how it works. We'll take you inside the cloud and show you how virtualization and software deployment work in this environment. We'll explain the differences between public, private and hybrid clouds. We'll walk you through a variety of ways to take advantage of cloud computing and help you identify key questions you should be asking to figure out the best approach for your business. Full Story

Announcing Sun HPC Software, Linux Edition 2.0

We are pleased to announce the official release of the Sun HPC Software, Linux Edition 2.0 product. an integrated, open-source software solution for Sun HPC clusters. It simplifies the deployment of HPC clusters by providing a ready-made framework of software components to use to turn a bare-metal system into a running HPC cluster. It provides software to provision, manage, and operate large scale Linux HPC clusters and serves as a foundation for optional add-ons such as schedulers, like Sun's Sun Grid Engine, and other components not included with the solution.

The major new features of this release are:

- Support for SLES 10sp2 - a key feature in offering single point of contact support

- Inclusion of Sun supported cluster software, such as:
  - Sun Clustertools 8.1 (8.2 will be available in SHSLE 2.0.1, to be released shortly)
  - SunStudio 12u1
  - Sun Grid Engine 6.2u2 (SGE 6.2u3 will be available also in SHSLE 2.0.1)

- A management database ("gtdb") for storing cluster configuration information and automatic generation of config files, along with scriptable, command-line tools ("gtt") to manipulate this database

- Lustre 1.8.0.1 with pre-built Linux kernels with Lustre patches

- MPI libraries pre-built for Pathscale and SunStudio x86 compilers, in addition to previously supported libraries and compilers

- Simplified installation and setup - new scripts have been included to automate the routine portions of the head node installation

- Several package upgrades too numerous to mention here, as well as many minor defect fixes. See the Release Notes for the List of Contents and Resolved Issues.

- Certification to run on RHEL 5.3, SLES 10sp2, and CentOS 5.3.

2.0 has been tested on a wide variety of the latest Sun hardware - see the Release Notes for the Tested Platforms list. Full Story