The power of supercomputers - energy, exascale and elevators

Paul Henning has written on his blog (HPC Ruminations) about the growing issue of power requirements for large scale computing. Paul's blog post - "Familiarity Breeds Complacency" - is partly in response to my article at HPCwire - "Exascale: power is not the problem" and my follow-up disucssion on here - "Supercomputers and other large science facilities".

Paul makes several good points and his post is well worth reading. He ends with an observation that I've noted before (in my own words):

One of supercomputing's biggest strengths - it's ability to help almost all areas of science and engineering - is also one of it's greatest weaknesses - because there a portfolio of cases rather than a single compelling champion to drive attention and investment.

PS - I've added Paul's new blog to my list of HPC blogs and news sites.

Looking ahead to ISC'12

I have posted my preview of ISC'12 Hamburg - the summer's big international conference for the world of supercomputing over on the NAG blog. I will be attending ISC'12, along with several of my NAG colleagues. My blog post discusses these five key topics:

• GPU vs MIC vs Other
• What is happening with Exascale?
• Top 500, Top 10,
• Tens of PetaFLOPS
• Finding the advantage in software
• Big Data and HPC 

Read more on the NAG blog ...