HPC Bingo

A big part of SC (Austin in 2015) is actually getting there. Most attendees will have to navigate the joys of long distance air travel. If you travel enough, or play the game wisely, you can secure frequent flyer elite status which helps make the air travel more bearable. Here is a version of elite status bingo for HPC. I listed some categories and "achievements" required for each. Can you claim elite HPC status?

HPC System User category

There have been lots of systems in HPC over the years, but we should stick to options that even a recent recruit to HPC might be able to claim. You can award yourself this category if you have used (logged into and run or compiled code) each of these systems:

• IBM Power system
• Cray XT, XE, or XC
• SGI shared memory system - Origin, Altix or UV
• x86 cluster
• A system with any one of Sparc, vector, or ARM, GPU, Phi, or FPGA

HPC Programmer category

Award yourself this category if you have written programs to run on a HPC system in each of these:

• Fortran 77
• Fortran 90 or later
• C
• MPI
• OpenMP
• Any one of CUDA, OpenACC, OpenCL, Python, R, Matlab

HPC Talker/Buzzword category

Buzzwords seem to be an integral part of HPC. To be awarded this category, you must have used each of these in talks (powerpoint etc.) since SC14:

• Big Data
• Any of green computing, energy efficient computing, or power aware computing
• One of my HPC analogies?
• "it's all about the science" (but then just talked about the HPC like everyone else!!)
•  Any reference to "FLOPS are free, data movement is hard" or similar
• Exascale

Secrets of the Supercomputers

These are revelations from inside the strange world of supercomputing centers. Nobody is pretending these are real stories. They couldn’t possibly be. Could they?

On one of my many long haul airplane plane journeys this year, I caught myself thinking about the strange things that go on inside supercomputer centers - and other parts of the HPC world. I thought it might be fun to poke at and mock such activities while trying to make some serious points.

Since the flight was a long one, I started writing ... and so "Secrets of the Supercomputers" was born.

You can find Episode 1 at HPC Wire today, touching on the topic of HPC procurement.

No offense to anyone intended. Gentle mocking maybe. Serious lessons definitely.

Take a look here for some serious comments on HPC procurement at the NAG blog.

Name that supercomputer (Quiz)

Instead of a sensible HPC blog post, how about some fun? Can you name these supercomputers?

I'm looking for actual machine names (e.g. 'Sequoia') and the host site (e.g. LLNL). Bonus points for the funding agency (e.g. DOE NNSA) and the machine type (e.g. IBM BlueGene/Q).

Submit your guesses or knowledgeable answers either through the comments field below, or to me on twitter (@hpcnotes).

For the photos, if you are stuck, you might need to use clues from my twitter stream as to where I have been recently.

Answers will be revealed once there have been enough guesses to amuse me. Have fun!

1. Which supercomputer are we looking underneath?
   


2. Acceptance of this leading system became a HPC news topic recently


3. NAG provides the Computational Science & Engineering Support Service for this one


4. One letter is all that’s needed to describe this supercomputer


5. Racing cattle powered by Greek letters


6. Spock was one of these


7. Which supercomputer does this photo show the inner rows of?
   


8. Memory with a deerstalker & pipe


9. Put an end to Ming (or did he)?


10. This plant/leaf is normally silver when used as the national symbol of this one’s host country

HPC fun for SC12

I've previously written some light-hearted but partly serious pieces for the main supercomputing events.

I'm working on one for SC12 too - again to be published in HPC Wire - but in the meantime, here are pointers for the SC11 and ISC11 articles:

• The top ten myths of SC (HPC Wire)
• Are you an ISC veteran?

The first mention of SC12

It's that time of year again. SC has started to drift into my inbox and phone conversations with increasing regularity - here comes Supercomputing 2012 in Salt Lake City. Last year, in the run up to SC11 in Seattle, I wrote the SC11 diary - blogging every few days on my preparations and thoughts for the biggest annual event of the supercomputing world.

I'm not sure I'll do such a diary again this year (unless by popular demand - not likely!). However, I will be writing some articles for some publications (HPC Wire and others - see my previous articles) in the coming weeks which will set the scene for SC from my point of view - burning issues I hope will be debated in the community, key technology areas I will be watching, and so on.

In the meantime, if you crave SC reading material, you might amuse yourself by reading my previous fun at SC time (e.g. The top ten myths of SC - in HPC Wire for SC11) or you might even want to translate my fun from ISC (Are you an ISC veteran?) to new meanings at SC.

If you want more serious content, then browse on this blog site (e.g. tagged "events") or on the NAG Blog (e.g. tagged "HPC").

If you find nothing you like - drop me a comment below or via twitter and I'll see what I can do to address the topic you are interested in!