hpcDIRECT scales new heights with SATAVIA
As I take a short break from the exhibition floor here at another excellent ISC18 in sunny Frankfurt, I’m delighted to announce SATAVIA as the latest customer to join our bare metal high performance computing (HPC) platform – hpcDIRECT.
DevOps. Stacking up to be a Common Theme at ISC18
Yesterday was a good day to be in Frankfurt. All of the majors in the supercomputing universe descended upon the Messe Frankfurt to begin ISC18 with a series of training seminars. For my morning session, I chose Getting Started with Containers on HPC through Singularity put on by the team at Sylabs, Inc. I have been tracking the progress on Singularity in the HPC community since before Sylabs was founded by CEO Greg Kurtzer in an effort to bring the technology of root secure containers into the realm of enterprise supported software. I was excited to hear about the progress that Sylabs has made and to see where the future of containers lies for the broader HPC community. If I was forced to sum the tutorial into a single portmanteau, it would be DevOps. After this session, it is clear to me that the world of DevOps that has been created in the cloud native universe is on a collision course with HPC. And the future of science says that it can’t happen soon enough.
TrueHPC at Industrial Scale
As we prepare to descend upon Frankfurt this week for ISC18, science will take its appropriate place at center stage. Throughout the week, the gathering will hear how through science we are challenging the world’s toughest problems, dissecting those problems down to their foundations and then building them back up by methodically moving every minute detail that has been learned into the powerful realm of the supercomputer. Science shows us that the best innovations are created by literally starting from scratch and building from there.
DNA research points to a new future for data storage
Readers of a certain age will remember buying much-loved albums on multiple formats. Perhaps first you had the vinyl version, then maybe a cassette for playing in the car and later a CD for added digital clarity. How about the DNA version? Earlier this year, Massive Attack, the British band, encoded their 1998 album Mezzanine into DNA to celebrate its 20th birthday.
HPC is unlocking the 'data gusher' in Oil and Gas research
An ‘oil gusher’, or a 'blowout', is the name for that phenomenon that you’ve seen in photos and film clips, when a drill strikes oil and it sprays out of the top of the well. It was common in the early 20th Century but is now quite rare, thanks to pressure control equipment. However in today’s oil and gas industry, data is the modern gusher – it sprays out in an uncontrolled fashion, signifying that something good is going on but it remains hard to get under control.
Less than 2 weeks until ISC18 – How is the HPC market shaping up?
The team at Verne Global and I are really looking forward to ISC18 – the European high performance computing (HPC) conference in Frankfurt, where our industry meets. It’s an interesting and engaging show that annually highlights the tremendous developments taking place across many sectors and only made possible by greater adoption of HPC. We’re especially looking forward to publicly introducing hpcDIRECT - our superb bare metal HPC platform - to the international HPC community.
Green leases are good, but the Nordics are better.
As the data economy grows, green leases are a welcome solution for energy intensive data centers. However, those owning - or colocating within data centers might want to think creatively, go a step further, and consider moving their data requirements to power grids that are both cheaper and cleaner
AI Events - Rumours from the trade show floor
After of a couple of weeks sunning and sailplane racing in Florida it was straight back into the saddle for a London-based Quarterly Business Review and the excellent “Rise of AI” event in Berlin. Following a year of attending various international AI events I’m starting to develop a feel for their differing textures and here is my current evaluation.
Like social media, ‘social currency’ isn’t going away
The conversation about blockchain is presently dominated by cryptocurrencies, with a certain amount of attention spilling into Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). There is no shortage of scepticism about the technology in these circumstances; cryptocurrencies look more like investment opportunities – and very risky ones at that – than actual currencies, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the majority of ICOs are scams. A recent study found that almost 80 percent are scams and just eight percent reach the trading stage.
How the cloud took over the cables
When the cloud emerged as a concept, it referred to computer services delivered remotely. Bandwidth was cheap, and it made sense to outsource and centralise computing. Physical location, and the physical network, seemed to have become irrelevant. This has turned out not to be true...
How the blockchain is reshaping the data center
Such is the hype around Bitcoin and blockchain technologies that numerous companies have seen their share prices rise simply by changing their names to include one of those words. In their rush to invest in the hot new thing, some investors don't check whether the companies actually have anything to do with blockchain.
Dutch data centers concerned about future electricity availability
The Dutch data center industry is crucial to the economy of the Netherlands, but its growth may be hindered by challenges to the local power supply infrastructure. In a recent letter to the Netherlands Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate, the Dutch Data Center Association (DDA) warned about limitations to the Dutch energy infrastructure, especially in Schiphol Rijk, Amsterdam Zuidoost and the Amsterdam Science Park.