Awesome Technology in Seattle

I just purchased some incredible technology out here in Seattle....
Bose QuietComfort 2 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones. Grid Goddess gives them a double thumbs up! I can't wait to use them (with my iPod nano) on my journey back to Connecticut via sardine can... oops, I mean a 737-800.

These headphones are so awesome they can probably even block out Gerry's snoring! ;-)

In a word.... WOW!

This is Grid Goddess' first Supercomputing Conference -- and first of all I want to say WOW! 9,707 attendees, half a terabit of network connectivity and all the vendors you'd ever want to talk to (265) are here. There are still no lines at the Ladies' room, but I see few more skirts this time. I went to Bill Gates' keynote speech yesterday. Even though I've been quoted as saying I would leave computing before I would go back to supporting a Microsoft environment, what he proposed as a front end for scientific computing is quite nice. If Microsoft really does embrace heterogeneity as Bill promised in his speech, this could bring scientific computing to a whole new level. I won't summarize his speech... you can listen to it here.

Hello from SC|2005

Hello from Seattle... Supercomputing 2005 is in full-swing here in the Pacific Northwest. I'll be posting regular updates on interesting things I see and hear here. Today I'm attending an all-day seminar titled Parallel Computing 101. It focuses on various types of hardware, software tools, and programming priciples.
On Monday, I'll attend a workshop on Blue Gene, the world's fastest supercomputer. Bill Gates' keynote -- the Changing Role of IT in the Sciences -- will be on Tuesday morning... should be interesting!

Bye for now!
GG

Microsoft and HPC

After years of relative silence, it looks like Microsoft is getting into the HPC game. If the fact that Bill Gates is the keynote speaker at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle next week isn't enough evidence for ya, check out this presentation from HP on Windows Compute Cluster Server. Penguins should sit up and take notice.