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Saturday November 17, 2007 
• SC07 in Retrospect I jotted down some impressions from Supercomputing '07.  - The HPC Developer Kit was very popular item. The team in Menlo Park put together Sun Studio 12 Compilers and Tools, Sun HPC Cluster Tools 7.1, and Sun Grid Engine on a single DVD, and we gave out hundreds. (The picture above shows the "pods" in the Sun Booth at SC'07 for Sun Studio, Grid Engine, and ClusterTools .. the HPC Dev Kit all together.)
- The Solaris Express Developer Edition DVDs never arrived... This was a major lost opportunity. We had to show people the website where they could download it (all 4 GB's), instead.
- Clearly, most HPC sites are running some version of Linux, not Solaris. At least, they're not yet running Solaris. Still, we need everything to be running on Linux as well as Solaris. And, we do (almost).
- Still there is the perception that Solaris is expensive. (No it's not .. IT'S FREE, like beer.) And that Sun Studio compilers only run on SPARC (NO, it runs on SPARC, x86, x64, Linux, and Solaris, and it's free too.)
- At the booth, I was asked "What IS Sun Studio" too many times. Some people think it's a graphics design package. We need a better name.
- Getting the word out about the performance analyzer, performance library, and thread analyzer is important... Sun Studio isn't just compilers.
- MPI is hard to program. So there was (for the first time) talk about UPC and Co-Array Fortran.
- Who picked Reno, and why? (Next year it's in Austin)
- Computer speeds have gotten about as fast as they can go. Now it's all about memory latency, cache, and parallel I/O.
- Computer systems have gotten denser, with more processors per cubic foot than ever before. And now the problem is cooling, and the bigger picture: the total energy footprint.
- Storage is the even bigger problem looming large: long term storage of petabytes of media and data files. (See Sun's Honeycomb). And if you think you have a problem backing up your iTunes and iPhoto libraries, think again!
- The Supercomputing exhibit has gotten a lot tamer each year. No more outrageous hucksters and showgirls. Still, lots of flashing lights, animated demos, and a zillion display screens.
- There was a brief power outage. The lights dimmed, flickered, went out, and then came back quickly. A chorus of "Uh oh" 's in unison could be heard. It was amazing to see 10,000 computers rebooting.
- Next year I'll bring better shoes.
More pictures on my Flickr page.
( Nov 17 2007, 01:01:08 AM PST )
[HPC]
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>>At the booth, I was asked "What IS Sun Studio" too many times. Some people think it's a graphics design package. We need a better name.<<
Ah, the fruits of Sun's marketing department! Did you know that Sun's marketing department has a long standing reputation for being the worst in the industry?
As the saying goes, Sun marketing couldn't sell food to a hungry person, or water to a thirsty one.
Anyways, that's why I always say "Sun Studio 12 compilers" when I pitch it over GCC, which immediately preempts the "What is Sun Studio?" question.
Posted by UX-admin on November 17, 2007 at 10:25 AM PST #
I've complained about this name choice since day one. Everywhere I can I use "Sun Studio Compilers and Tools". A better name would be something like "Sun Developer Toolset". (I was going to say "Solaris Developer Toolset" but were on Linux as well.)
There was also an attempt to refer to non-Java tools as "Native Tools". My complaint was that this would include the bow and arrow, and various blunt objects used for striking opponents squarely on the head.
Posted by rchrd on November 17, 2007 at 11:59 AM PST #
>>There was also an attempt to refer to non-Java tools as "Native Tools". My complaint was that this would include the bow and arrow, and various blunt objects used for striking opponents squarely on the head.<<
*Chuckle* Yyyeeeppp!
By the way, it's a known fact that in HPC world, Fortran is king. Unfortunately, many years ago when I was a university student, we had the misfortune to learn Java instead of Fortran. Can you recommend any books for getting one introduced to Fortran?
Posted by UX-admin on November 18, 2007 at 09:56 AM PST #
Yes. Nearly all the HPC codes are Fortran, or a combination of Fortran and C.
Stephen Chapman writes the best Fortran books. His latest updated book is
FORTRAN 95/2003 for Scientists & Engineers
at
http://www.powells.com/biblio/72-9780073191577-0
Only problem is that it is bloody expensive!
You might be able to find one of the earlier editions (since little of Fortran 2003 has been implemented yet in compilers).
Posted by richard friedman on November 19, 2007 at 09:23 AM PST #