@HPCpodcast with Shahin Khan and Doug Black

Chris Miller, author of the important and riveting book Chip War, joins us to discuss the crucial nature of the semiconductor industry and and the global competition that has been a part of its history since early days. He is Associate Professor of International History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Eurasia Director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Chip War has been shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. We had a long list of topics and questions: How did we get here? Was it poor risk management, shear complexity, or too many black swans? The impact of political dysfunction, social polarization, and policy inconsistency on waging such wars. Might Western values and standards of privacy and individual freedom a competitive disadvantage in the age of AI where raw data superiority can lead to economic superiority? Has technology shifted from a situation where it’d be used first in govt/military, then companies, then consumers to now, when it’s the reverse: the consumer market, then companies, then government? How much time is there to regain competitiveness? Why did the US not learn its lessons after Japan’s rise in memory chip fabrication technology? Is there something missing in the public-private partnership model in the US? Is supercomputing its own race or is it subordinate to the bigger tech issue? Was there a lost opportunity to formulate a different, more harmonious, world order? What is the impact of current trade barriers? What options do other countries have? Several of the leading cast in the book seem to have had challenging personal journeys before they became prominent. Is that a coincidence or a requirement to build a world-leading semiconductor company?! Can it be that it is an effective way to instill the kind of discipline and culture that is required to succeed in the chip business? And we got through most of them. Join us for this fascinating discussion.   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-42: Chris Miller on Chip War appeared first on OrionX.net.

SC22 is approaching and we take stock of the taglines for the show going back to SC14. Do you remember any of them? This years tagline leads us to trade wars and the impact they could have on scientific collaboration. We’ll have an entire show on ship wars next week with a special guest. Also covered is new shared memory capabilities in the cloud.   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-41: SC Taglines, Trade Wars, Shared Memory Tech appeared first on OrionX.net.

We are delighted to have Kathy Yelick as our special guest to celebrate the Exascale Day (10/18). Dr. Yelick is the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the Vice Chancellor for Research at UC Berkeley, and Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her expansive perspective and expertise led us through a wide ranging discussion including the impact of exascale computing on society, the role of HPC in helping set public and international policy, multi-physics research, advancing software technologies, diversity in HPC, the recent RFI from DOE and what the future might hold, the enormous contributions of UC Berkeley to computing technologies and scientific research and how it stays in the forefront, and proposals for a new college. We also touch on a few of Dr. Yelick’s research projects such as Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) and the ExaBiome project and the Berkeley Benchmarking and Optimization (Bebop).   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-40: Kathy Yelick on Exascale Day, Research, New College appeared first on OrionX.net.

The storied Aurora exascale supercomputer at Argonne National Lab is making progress as blades for the system are reportedly shipping. This was part of the news from the well-crafted and executed Intel Innovation Day. Open source software is a big part of the HPC/AI puzzle and Linux wars are heating up. The Tesla AI day provided some info on what is new with their home-grown AI chip and the associated system.   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-39: Aurora, Intel Day, Linux Wars, Tesla Day appeared first on OrionX.net.

We caught up with Steve Conway, well-known HPC executive and analyst formerly with IDC and Hyperion Research, in an engaging and wide ranging discussion. We start with Edge HPC and trends towards massively-distributed massively-heterogeneous computing, which takes us to convergence of HPC and AI, mixed precision spectrum, the importance of simulation, the impact of exascale on general computing, global policies, China and Europe, the impact on scientific collaboration, differences in funding models, and the necessary ingredients to attract top talent.   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-38: Steve Conway on HPC Technology and Policy Trends appeared first on OrionX.net.

How did Richard Feynman end up playing the bongo drums? How did a new take on Amdahl’s Law helped propel massively parallel computing and become Gustafson’s Law? And what’s wrong with IEEE 754 number format that the new Posit format fixes? We go to the source as we welcome special guest John Gustafson in another very lively conversation.   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-37: John Gustafson on Feynman, Gustafson’s Law, Posit Format appeared first on OrionX.net.

Cool stories and valuable insights in this episode as we get together with Adrian Cockcroft who recently joined OrionX having served as a vice president at AWS for the past several years. We start with Netflix’s move to the cloud, a significant event that helped put cloud computing on the map. Then it’s on to Environment, Sustainability, and Governance (ESG), Formula-1 racing, and cloud configurations and interconnects for HPC and AI workloads.   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-36: Adrian Cockcroft on Cloud, HPC Data, ESG, and Netflix appeared first on OrionX.net.

Highlights from the recent Hot Chips conference with discussions of UCIe and why it could cause a ripple effect in the industry, Moore’s law and 3D packaging, Silicon Photonics, inference in the device or in the data center, silicon for the edge, CXL, and code generation. This is followed by an update on Quantum Computing following two important papers on quantum machine learning and unstructured NP-complete problems. The field continues to be in its infancy while making rapid and significant progress. We end with a review of the dedication ceremonies for the Frontier exascale system. Join us.   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-35: Hot Chips Conference, Quantum Update, Frontier appeared first on OrionX.net.

After several years of experimentation and various consortia, CXL is emerging as the standard for advanced functionality for fabric technologies. We also discuss some of the details of the CHIPS and Science Act that was recently passed in the US.   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-34: CXL, CHIPS Act appeared first on OrionX.net.

Our special guest today is Melyssa Fratkin, Industrial Programs Director at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), who also co-chairs Texas Women in HPC with Carolyn Devany, Executive Chair at Data Vortex Technologies. Following her excellent talk at the Dell HPC Community meeting in Austin last week, we caught up with Melyssa to discuss the state of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in HPC and her recommendations on how to accelerate progress in this important area. We ask lots of questions and cover lots of topics, including why this is such a hard problem, the burden of being a pioneer, the impact of political environments and changing laws, how to post jobs that attract a diverse set of candidates, why you need support from the top and across the organization, and more. Join us!   OrionX Editorial TeamThe OrionX editorial team manages the content on this website. The post @HPCpodcast-33: Equity-Diversity-Inclusion in HPC appeared first on OrionX.net.