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In Graphics: Supercomputing Superpowers
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Keyframe 16y agoI just watched this the other day - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9kobkqAicU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9kobkqAicU Cray-1 Supercomputer 30th Anniversary. I would give up my career and turn it around if given a chance to work in HPC.
- hugh3 16y agoWhat part of HPC would you like to work in? I have some contact with various HPC facilities but have never envied the people who work there -- they're just sysadmins who happen to work in larger, noisier server rooms than most.
- mattds 16y agoWell, I'm just one of those sysadmins (but the clusters on which I work are much more smaller than the 'monsters' in the top500). I don't know if someone could envy me but there are surely other things apart the noise of HVAC systems (by the way we are using remote console when possible :-)). How about working with a lot of different computer nodes combining them with a fast network (Infiniband) and exporting the storage space through the cluster with a parallel file system? How about optimizing every aspect of the software installation (OS, compilers, scientific libraries) to give your users the best resources to run their simulations (biophysicist, electrical engineers, etc.)? To not to mention follow the aspects regarding the structure of the data center: cooling systems, UPS, raised floors, etc.? It doesn't sound too bad to me :-)
- Keyframe 16y agoThanks, but I doubt I will ever be so lucky, especially considering even if I did have an opportunity I'd probably lack in experience needed for such a job. Anyways, while fantasizing, my dream job would be to work in r&d on building those HPC machines (software and system wise, algos especially, not EE), or writing/optimizing code that runs on them, especially vector processing units. My area of interest is graphics research.
- pretzel 16y agoSo where does Google fit in on that scale?
- portlandFan12 16y agoGoogle has a lot of computers, but they are not tightly coupled enough to be considered super computers.
- scorchin 16y agoI'm curious about the applications of these systems. Why is it that finance would be the third largest (known) group for supercomputer use? What kind of number crunching would they be doing?
- SandB0x 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_novo_protein_structure_prediction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_novo_protein_structure_predi...
- scorchin 16y agoHow does that relate to finance? I know that protein folding involves massive computation, as it was what our university cluster was being used for 40% of the time.
- hugh3 16y agoI don't know why the grandparent mentioned it, but I do know that D.E. Shaw works on both.
- bbgm 16y agoThere's DE Shaw, the Hedge Fund and DE Shaw Research. Different focus for each entity.
- SandB0x 16y agoSorry, for some reason I only read the first and last sentences of your post. Maybe they are used for economic forecasting by governments?
- eagleal 16y agoI can think only about trade forecasting, and natural resources management (like estimating oil exhaustion).
- yangyang 16y ago
- iamcalledrob 16y agoThese kind of articles are why I really love the BBC.
- megaman821 16y agoWhile the supercomputers themselves are interesting, I really like graphic. I think it displays the information in a more clear and compelling way compared to something like a stacked column chart, like http://www.highcharts.com/demo/?example=column-stacked&theme=default http://www.highcharts.com/demo/?example=column-stacked&t..., which would just be too busy with a lot of information.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- cpg 16y agoPretty cool! Check out the "By OS" button - most of the graph is Linux. Way to go! :)