As 2007 fades away, I thought I would reflect on some of the HPC events of the last twelve months. Having thought about it, though, nothing really stands out in my mind as a big breakthrough or new paradigm shifting technology.
As 2007 fades away, I thought I would reflect on some of the HPC events of the last twelve months. Of course there was plenty of news, new products, mergers, acquisitions, and all other kind of normal stuff that one would expect from any market. Having thought about it, though, nothing really stands out in my mind as a big breakthrough or new paradigm shifting technology.
Of course when you read the press releases they all seem to imply that the world will never be the same when you use some latest and greatest gizmo, software, or service.
Before the people who have worked so hard in various corners of the market say bad things about me, let me first say, Thank You. In my opinion, we are further along than we were last year at this time due to your efforts. I include everyone from the Linux driver writers, to the guys taping out multi-core processors. We are moving forward. This past year you could buy more FLOPS (and use less power) for your dollar than in the past.
My disappointment is based on my belief that HPC is still hard and will continue to be this way until we figure out how to create cost-effective turn-key software for this market.
The hardness is in part due to parallel programming and the multitude of ways in which one can decide to express the parallel execution in their code. Multicore is forcing the issue in the mainstream markets,…
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