Wednesday November 22, 2006

DARPA announced yesterday [PDF] that IBM and Cray have been selected to proceed to Phase III of their High Productivitiy Computing Systems (HPCS) program. Sun will not receive funding for Phase III. While this is understandably a big disappointment to the many Sun people who have worked on Phase I and Phase II of the program, in my own view this is a net positive for Sun. And I don't think that's just sour grapes.

Sun did a lot of very creative, future-looking work as part of our Phase II work. We've learned a great deal about productivity for HPC, and have generated some very interesting and relevant technologies. I don't think we are going to throw all of that away simply because we didn't win funding for Phase III. Instead, we are now free to pick and choose from our new toolbox and incorporate the most appropriate technologies at our own pace into our future products. I believe that execution flexibility will yield a better result for Sun and for our HPC customers in the long term.

Does this lack of HPCS funding mean Sun is no longer committed to HPC? No. Does it mean Sun will not be playing in the high-end, at PetaFLOPs scale? No. In fact, systems of this size built from more commodity-oriented approaches will likely be deployed earlier than the HPCS program's milestones. And I expect Sun will play a leading role in this space.

I'm in the midst of a Toyota service experience, and so far, so good.

I took my RAV4 down to the local Jiffy Lube yesterday for an oil change and discovered two things. First, that the hood would not unlatch, and second, that the vehicle was leaking some sort of fluid at a noticeable rate. Noticeable, that is, when the helpful Jiffy Lube employee pointed it out for which I'm very thankful.

Jiffy Lube sent me on my way since they could do nothing for me. Luckily, I was on the Automile--a stretch of Rt. 1 south of Boston famous for having a car dealership for pretty much every make of car on the market. The Toyota dealership was just a mile or so down the road (the Automile these days stretches for considerably more than a mile.)

I had to wait about two hours for a diagnosis, which isn't great, but they were busy and I dropped in unannounced, so I'm certainly not complaining.

They got the hood latch unjammed without a problem. The fluid was transmission fluid. There's a leak in the pan and the hoses are all rotted out. Yesterday, they were inituially hopeful they could get the parts for today, but found that one of the parts wasn't even in the country and would have to be ordered. They told me they'd have a better idea on Monday how long it would take to get the repair done.

This morning, I received eight email messages from Toyota, each titled SPECIAL ORDER PART ARRIVED. So far, they've received:

• TO35106-32032 PAN SUB-ASSY, TRANSA 1
• TO32922-42010 TUBE, OIL COOLER, OU 1
• TO35168-33020 GASKET, TRANSAXLE OI 1
• TO32921-42010 TUBE, OIL COOLER, IN 1
• TO32901-32060 ELBOW SUB-ASSY, OIL 1
• TO90467-A0012 CLIP 4
• TO90445-17096 HOSE 2
• TO90301-10189 RING, O 2

The remaining part is on back-order. While it's frustrating to not have the vehicle, I do appreciate the email notifications as a way of keeping me informed about forward progress.

The explosion early this morning in Danvers was at a chemical plant owned by CAI that makes inks, not a propane facility as was initially reported on the national news. Thankfully, there have been only injuries reported and no deaths despite the fact that over 30 buildings were destroyed or damaged.

A woman called into one of the local news shows to describe her experiences. She was in Salem, an adjacent town, babysitting her nephews. She said she was awoken just before 3am by the biggest noise she'd ever heard. Her bed was shaking and she thought initially it was an earthquake. She said she was very frightened and couldn't get through to the police to find out what had happened. Outside she and a neighbor saw a large, mushroom-shaped cloud of very black smoke rising into the air. She said she wondered if they had been bombed. They got in the car (she didn't mention whether she had the nephews with her or not)...and then the story went in a direction I wasn't expecting at all.

The next thing I hear is that she got to the site so quickly that she was able to get a really good view of what was going on. WHAT? Hello? You are woken up by an enormous explosion, you see a mushroom cloud of smoke shooting into the air, you are responsible for watching over several children---AND YOU DRIVE TO GROUND ZERO?