High-performance computing: Supercomputing everywhere

For those of you that do not know John West, take a look at a few of his articles. John is definitely a name you will want to remember if you are just getting starting in High End Computing.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/hpc/

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/20/34FEnextbigthing_west_1.html

High End Computing comes to University of Arkansas

For those who think High End Computing and Great College Football can't co-exist on the same campus, need to take a look at this article.

http://www.supercomputingonline.com/article.php?sid=14399

The article reads in part.... demonstrating its position as a national leader in high-performance computing, the University of Arkansas has received an $803,306 equipment grant from the National Science Foundation to purchase and assemble the university's second supercomputer. The new machine will be among the fastest supercomputers in all U.S. academic institutions.

MilMor

Succession Planning

I would like to introduce a topic that all of us should be thinking about in the high performance computing industry. That is succession planning! Most high end computing organizations have a very skilled and highly educated work force. With the current wave of retirements I believe we will soon, if not already, start to see a tremendous shortage of these skills, especially in the leadership group.

Succession planning and mentoring must become a major emphasis as we develop new leaders in our industry. My question; Does everyone recognize this and how are you addressing it?

MilMor

Welcome

There are many challenges in all areas of high-end computing. Simple things like Systems Administration takes on a totally different meaning when you are admin'ing a system that consists of 8000 quad-core processors. In high end computing we talk about petabytes the way we used to talk about megabytes. There has always been a shortage of skilled sysadmins but within the high end computing communities the shortage takes on a new deminision.

It is my hope this blog will promote the involvement of all levels of personnel across the full scope of high end computing from systems operators to the chief scientist. High end computing is a special concern for our governments. I hope that in some small way this blog might answer some of their concerns and perhaps in some small way aid our soldiers, airman, marines, and sailors engaged in active warfare at this time.

Welcome one and all.

MilMor