Grid and Cluster Computing

Operation Bot Roast

2007-11-30T06:49:00.000-05:00

According to CNN, a New Zealand teenager has been questioned in connection with a scheme by hackers to remotely take over more than 1 million computers worldwide and use them for criminal activity, New Zealand police and the FBI said Thursday.

FBI Director Robert Mueller says botnets are "the weapon of choice for cyber criminals."

The FBI has identified at least 2.5 million unsuspecting computer users who have been victims of so-called "botnet" activity. Hackers install viruses, worms and other attack programs that allow them to take over the computers and use them to commit cyber crimes.

Industry numbers suggest there are as many as 5 million infected computers.

For more information: Click Here

More botnet news.

2007-10-11T16:00:00.001-04:00

According to Symantec's most recent Internet Security Threat Report, published in September, the company's sensors detected more than 5 million distinct botnet-infected computers during the first six months of 2007, which represents roughly a 7 percent increase when compared to the same period last year.

More scary news about botnets...

2007-09-07T06:09:00.000-04:00

Think your virus scanner is protecting you? Maybe not.

In other news:
The Storm worm botnet has grown so massive and far-reaching that it easily overpowers the world's top supercomputers. Matt Sergeant, chief anti-spam technologist with MessageLabs, recently said in an interview. "If you add up all 500 of the top supercomputers, it blows them all away with just 2 million of its machines. It's very frightening that criminals have access to that much computing power, but there's not much we can do about it."

Oh great.

More about botnets...

2007-08-03T05:02:00.000-04:00

Wow, GG feels like she's been under a rock for a few years. I guess I have been too busy trying to use the power of Grid for good not evil.

These botnet thingys are a. pretty prevalent and b. pretty powerful. McAfee says that a botnet took down the infrastructure of a Central American country... I'm sure some of you have some good comebacks for that, but, still, it shows that these botnets are not to be ignored. I think I'm going to spend a little time learning about these. Watch out CIOs worldwide, you could have your Windoze systems on a grid regardless of whether you gave permission or not!

The McAfee Paper
Basic Facts about Botnets

A girl can't catch a break, can she?

2007-08-03T04:52:00.000-04:00

Ok, so how is this fair?

"A man who gets angry at work may well be admired for it but a woman who shows anger in the workplace is liable to be seen as "out of control" and incompetent, according to a new study presented on Friday."

See: Angry men get ahead; angry women penalized: study

botnets?

2007-08-02T14:37:00.000-04:00

Is your system part of a botnet? How would you know? One more reason I love my Macintosh.

Guardian article on Botnets

I know, I know... it's been a while!

2007-06-29T14:37:00.000-04:00

Finally, I have some good news to post! GG got a hybrid! Welcome to the newest member of the family!

On the grid front, I'm still working hard. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Happy Summer!

yes... i am still alive.

2006-10-21T23:50:00.000-04:00

Dear Faithful Readers,
I must apologize for my long absence... it has been nothing but insanity here. I just got back from Beijing. Four words of advice: Buy a hybrid car. Do it now, lest our air become as polluted as the air in Beijing. GG suffered an asthma attack of epic proportion in Beijing due to the pollution. It made giving my talk at an internal software convention a bit of a challenge, considering the accompanying laryngitis. Hopefully my raspy voice was considered more sexy than pathetic by the largely male audience. ;-) Anyway, lots going on with grids these days.. hope to get some notes typed up and posted here soon. Thanks for hanging in there!

Cluster Training at Georgetown

2006-08-30T17:16:00.000-04:00

I'm in not-so-sunny DC this week checking out a new course offering at Georgetown University. Introduction to Beowulf Clusters is a 4-day class which tells you everything you need to know about setting up a Beowulf cluster using Rocks, Oscar and a diskless toolkit developed at Georgetown. Aside from the great information presented in the class, meeting people from other industries who are using clusters or want to is invaluable.

Georgetown is planning to make this into a certification program... so stay tuned to GridsWatch for more information.

Amazon.com truly sells everything!

2006-08-25T07:11:00.000-04:00

I had to make sure I wasn't still asleep and dreaming this morning when I read about Amazon getting into the Utility Computing Game. Is there anything they don't sell? See: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3541

Right from the horses mouth: Amazon's EC2 Web Services

A coffee table book about .... grids?

2006-08-20T15:05:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what to make of this ad... I'm sure it's a lovely book, with high production values, but really, who (other than me) would display this on their coffee table?

Still shaking my head,
GG

P.S. Am I going to see you at GridWorld in DC?

Senate Bill 3684 looks at data center power consumption...

2006-08-01T16:50:00.000-04:00

With current world events in their existing state, can't these guys find something better to study?????

109th U.S. Congress (2005-2006)
S. 3684: A bill to study and promote the use of energy efficient computer servers in the United States

Check out the full text here.

Grid, Heal Thyself!

2006-05-12T07:18:00.000-04:00

IBM has introduced a version of its autonomic software for grid computing environments.

Batch-on-Grid adapts to the ebb and flow of computing workloads, applying server resources from the grid pool on the fly.

The tool also corrects glitches or failures itself so IT administrators don't have to baby-sit the computer and solve its problems.

To learn more, see: Internetnews.com article

What books are on YOUR bedside table?

2006-03-21T22:22:00.000-05:00

Grid Goddess was never big on romance novels, but things have taken a turn to the extreme these days.

Grid Computing: The Savvy Manager's Guide by Pawel Plaszczak and Richard Wellner, Jr. and Grid Computing For Developers by Vladimir Silva are at the top of the stack right now.

Silva's book is heavy on the Globus Toolkit, but gives a good overview of grid concepts and technology and boy, are there a lot of code samples!!?!?! The Saavy Manager's book, on the other hand, is targeted toward, well, managers. It gives a broad overview of the technology, some case studies, and a good dose of competitive advantages vs. implementation challenges. More details when I'm back from TX... plenty of airport and airplane time to savor these beasts from cover to cover.

'Til next time, GG

P.S. If you know of a fabulous HPC/Cluster/Grid book that keeps you up turning pages until the wee hours, I'd love to hear about it. Drop me a line!

codebreaking@home

2006-03-03T15:05:00.000-05:00

HCEY ZTCS OPUP PZDI UQRD LWXX FACT TJMB HDVC JJMM ZRPY IKHZ AWGL YXWT MJPQ UEFS ZBCT VRLA LZXW VXTS LFFF AUDQ FBWR RYAP SBOW JMKL DUYU PFUQ DOWV HAHC DWAU ARSW TXCF VOYF PUFH VZFD GGPO OVGR MBPX XZCA NKMO NFHX PCKH JZBU MXJW XKAU OD?Z UCVC XPFT

Sound cryptic? Good, it's supposed to be. This is a code produced by the M4 Enigma machine in WWII. Thanks to a bunch of volunteers, 2500 PCs and grid computing software, this code was finally broken.

Click here to find out what that gobbledygook means.

United Devices Grid Conference - March 28 & 29 - Austin, TX

2006-02-22T12:30:00.000-05:00

As part of my day job, I will be presenting at The United Devices 2006 Grid Conference -- Grid Goes Beyond: New Grid Applications, Strategies & Business Areas. Hope to see you there!

Won't you take me to... Clovertown?

2006-02-10T23:38:00.000-05:00

Intel just announced that it will ship a four-core chip in 2007... It also doubles as a hot plate.

InfoWorld Article on Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server

2006-02-09T17:43:00.000-05:00

InfoWorld takes a look at Windows CCS...

HPC and Grid Events for 2006

2006-02-06T10:42:00.000-05:00

February 6, 2006
IDC Virtualization Forum: Making Optimal Use of IT Resources
New York, NY
http://www.idc.com/virtualizationforum06

February 9-10, 2006
2nd Technical Symposium on Reconfigurable Computing
Manchester, UK
http://www.csar.cfs.ac.uk/fpga

February 13-14, 2006
Women In Technology International Conference
San Diego, CA
http://www.witi.com/center/conferences/siliconvalley/

February 13-16, 2006
GGF16 - The 16th Global Grid Forum
Athens, Greece
http://www.ggf.org/GGF16/ggf_events_ggf16.htm

February 22-23, 2006
CEIViz '06 - 1st International Conference for High-Performance Visualization
Orlando, FL
www.ensight.com/ceiviz06/

March 28-30, 2006
Main Street Supercomputing: The Convergence of HPC and Grid Computing
Newport, RI
http://www.hpcc-usa.org/

April 2-6, 2006
39th Annual Simulation Symposium
Huntsville, AL
http://agent.csd.auth.gr/~karatza/ANSS39/

April 2-6, 2006
High Performance Computing Symposium (HPC) 2006
Huntsville, AL
http://www.caip.rutgers.edu/hpc2006/

April 3-6, 2006
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo
Boston, MA
http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/events/12BOS06A

April 3-6, 2006
Storage Networking World
San Diego, CA
http://www.snwusa.com/

April 10-12, 2006
HPC User Forum
Richmond, VA
http://www.hpcuserforum.com

April 18-20, 2006
Server Blade Summit 2006
Garden Grove, CA
http://www.serverbladesummit.com/

April 18-20, 2006
IEEE Workshop on High Performance Computing in Medicine and Biology (HiPCoMB-2006)
Vienna, Austria
http://www.pdcl.wayne.edu/HiPCoMB-2006

April 25-29, 2006
20th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium
Rhodes Island, Greece
http://www.ipdps.org

April 30 - May 5, 2006
Networld + Interop 2006
Las Vegas, NV
http://www.interop.com/

May 3-5, 2006
2006 ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers
Ischia, Italy
http://www.computingfrontiers.org

May 3-5, 2006
BioIT World 2006
Boston, MA
http://www.bioitworldexpo.com/live/26/

May 8-11, 2006
International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA 20006)
Glasgow, UK
http://www.iccsa.org

May 14-18, 2006
Gartner Symposium /ITxpo
Orlando, FL
http://www3.gartner.com/2_events/community/community_overview.html

May 15-18, 2006
NASA/IEEE Mass Storage and Systems Technology 2006
College Park, MD
http://StorageConference.org

May 16-19, 2006
The 6th International Workshop on GLOBAL AND PEER-TO-PEER COMPUTING
Singapore
http://grp2pc.lri.fr

May 16-19, 2006
Grid Asia 2006
Singapore
http://gridasia.ngp.org.sg

May 21-24, 2006
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo
Barcelona, Spain
http://www.gartner.com/it/sym/2006_/spr7/spr7_home.jsp

May 30 - June 3, 2006
SIGGRAPH2006
Boston, MA
http://www.siggraph.org/s2006

June 2006
Challenges of Large Applications in Distributed Environments (CLADE 2006)
Paris, France
http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~bair/CLADE2006/

June 5-9, 2006
SGI Worldwide User Group Conference
Las Vegas, NV
http://www.sgiug.org

June 6-8, 2006
Drug Discovery and Technological Leaders Summit
Montreux, Switzerland
http://www.drugdiscoverysummit.com/

June 6-9, 2006
European Grid Conference 2006
Brussells, Belgium
http://www.balticgrid.org/Dissemination/Events/Upcoming_Events/EGC06

July 10-12, 2006
7th International Meeting on HPC for Computational Science
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
http://vecpar.fe.up.pt/2006/

June 11-16, 2006
TechEd 2006
Boston, MA
http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2005/teched2006.mspx

July 12-15, 2006
Twelfth International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS 2006)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
http://www.icpads.umn.edu/

June 20-22, 2006
International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2006
Hong Kong
http://www.iaeng.org/IMECS2006/index.html

June 20-22, 2006
Storage World Conference (SWC) Spring
Long Beach, CA
http://www.storageworldconference.com/home

June 20-23, 2006
CITSA '06
Orlando, FL
http://www.info-cybernetics.org/citsa2006/website/default.asp

June 26-29, 2006
WORLDCOMP'06
Las Vegas, NV
http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/worldcomp06/ws

June 28-30, 2006
eSocial Science Conference
Manchester, UK
http://www.ncess.ac.uk/events/conference/index.shtml#organising

July 12-15, 2006
Twelfth International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS 2006)
Minneapolis, MN
http://www.icpads.umn.edu/

July 25-27, 2006
Commodity Cluster Symposium 2006
Wyndham Baltimore Inner Harbor
http://www.arl.hpc.mil/events/clusters2006

August 14-17, 2006
LinuxWorld Expo West 2006
San Francisco, CA
http://www.linuxworldexpo.com

September 7-11, 2006
IBC 2006
Amsterdam
http://www.ibc.org/

September 10-14, 2006
GlobusWorld 2006
Washington D.C.
http://www.globusworld.org/

September 19-21, 2006
Storage World Conference (SWC)
Boston, MA
http://www.storageworldconference.com/home

September 25-27, 2006
Cluster 2006
Barcelona, Spain
http://cluster2006.org/index.html

October 1-6, 2006
SEG
New Orleans, LA
http://meeting.seg.org/

October 3-7, 2006
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
San Diego, CA
http://www.gracehopper.org/

November 6-7, 2006
World Pharma IT Congress
Philadelphia, PA
http://www.uspharmaitcongress.com/

November 11-17, 2006
SC06
Tampa, FL
http://sc06.supercomputing.org/

November 12-15, 2006
ICNP 2006
Santa Barbara, CA
http://www.ieee-icnp.org/2006/

December 3-8, 2006
LISA '06
Washington D.C.
http://www.usenix.org/

December 4-6, 2006
International Conference on e-Science and Grid Technologies
Amsterdam
http://www.gridbus.org/escience/

December 18-21, 2006
HiPC
Bangalore
http://www.hipc.org/hipc2006/papers.html

Globus Toolkit receives NSF Funding

2005-12-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

The Globus Toolkit just received $13M in funding from the NSF. For details, see: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/uoc-nsf112805.php

Awesome Technology in Seattle

2005-11-17T10:22:00.000-05:00

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!

2005-11-16T21:29:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-05T06:22:00.000-05:00

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.

Excellent Grid Information Resource

2005-10-03T17:21:00.000-04:00

The guys over at Georgetown University have put together an excellent resource containing information on Grid Computing. It's called GridsWatch and promises to be not only be a place that keeps you up to date on the latest information on grids from the press, but they are also building a database of people and projects in the grid computing world. GridGoddess strongly recommends you check it out!

Good news for Globus!

2005-10-03T17:00:00.000-04:00

IBM has announced that it is teaming up with Univa to offer an enterprise-friendly version of the Globus Toolkit with their Linux and UNIX servers. Additionally, IBM will use Globus internally, presumably to manage the resources they offer as part of their Deep Computing on-demand product.

See: ZDNet Article

GGF15 and GridWorld in Boston

2005-10-03T08:34:00.000-04:00

I'm attending GGF15 in Boston this week. I'm just back from a business trip to Europe, but got some good sleep last night so I'm fresh and ready to hear what's new in GridWorld. Watch this space for interesting news from the conference!

Tiger has grid built right in!

2005-06-01T22:56:00.000-04:00

The new version of Mac OS X -- Tiger -- has grid functionality built right in. Xgrid is distributed computing technology configurable by a few clicks, turning individual Macs into members of a compute grid or cluster. Way cool!

Linux Networx to offer dual-core cluster nodes...

2005-05-25T17:39:00.000-04:00

Linux Networx plans to offer its Evolocity cluster systems with the option of using Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors. Dual-core processors are the next evolution of AMD64's Direct Connect Architecture and directly connect two cores on a single die, along with memory, I/O and dedicated caches to improve overall system performance and efficiency.

For more information, see: Linux Networx Evolocity Site

2005-05-18T03:33:00.000-04:00

Recently MIT researchers found holes in ssh, bringing into question the basics of Grid security...

Good old Secure Shell isn't so secure it seems!

Go here for more info...

Grid Goddess gets published!

2005-04-22T07:37:00.000-04:00

A woman's dream come true. Not only does someone care what she has to say on a topic, but they actually paid money for it! If you are a Cutter subscriber, you can see what I (and my esteemed co-author Alex Alexander) have to say about Grid Computing in Industry. If you are not a subscriber, maybe you should be! In any case, you can go here and see my name in lights.

Enjoy!
GG

Forbes/Oracle Seminar on The Business of Grid Computing

2005-04-18T14:11:00.000-04:00

From forbesconferences.com:
Companies are moving away from big expensive computer systems that immobilize huge amounts of capital and toward flexible, lower-cost computing equipment based on industry standards. Businesses are buying hundreds (or maybe thousands) of cheap servers that run on Intel chips and Linux software. Think of Google. Its search engine runs off of about 100,000 cheap servers and Linux.

Grid computing is not new, but current standards are making it easier for companies to avoid costly computer purchases and other associated operating expenses. The momentum behind grid computing comes from research labs and universities that are tackling big scientific applications. In the corporate world, grid computing allows businesses to pool their IT resources into a single virtual computer that analyzes demand and adjusts supply accordingly - combining small servers into a few powerful “virtual computers” that perform big-computer tasks.

Forbes and Oracle share a common interest: An unwavering commitment to help executives successfully address the challenges they meet. This exclusive event will examine how businesses take advantage of Grid Computing to lower the costs of their infrastructures and improve quality of service at the same time. Join senior level executives to explore critical issues like how to adopt Grid Computing technologies with minimal investment, zero disruption, and fast ROI through in-depth case studies, interviews, and “thought leader” commentary.

DATE: May 5, 2005
PLACE: The Harvard Club of New York City, New York, NY

Registration for this event is for VP level and above executives only. PLEASE NOTE: Space is limited. Attendance for qualified individuals is on a first come first served basis.

All registrations are subject to approval of Forbes.

For more information, please contact Emily Lord, Executive Relations Coordinator, at 212-367-2519; elord@forbes.com.

GG: I guess us grid peons are not welcome at this event... Hey, wait... I'm President and Chairman of the Board of GridGoddess.com. See you there!

Fujitsu has a CyberGRIP

2005-04-09T07:28:00.000-04:00

Fujitsu has just announced that it is using a grid between and among its' facilities in Japan and the US to enable more efficient mutual use of computing resources. They've developed their own middleware called CyberGRIP. Read more about it here and here.

Grid Computing Security

2005-04-07T16:47:00.000-04:00

A panel at Ziff Davis Media's Enterprise Solutions Virtual Tradeshow warned potential grid users of the security risks involved. Grid Goddess says that the risks spoken about are nothing new to computing -- confidentiality, integrity and access. The grid just intensifies the risks because the information is shared across organizations and untrusted boundaries. For the full story, click here.

Google's use of massively parallel compute farm

2005-04-01T07:29:00.000-05:00

Google is branching out into the soft drink world by launching Google Gulp as part of it's new GoogleFoods line. They are making use of a massive parallel compute farm called GulpPlex to process information collected wirelessly from a transmitter in the base of the Google Gulp bottle. Read more about the interesting flavors such as Glutamate Grape and Beta Carroty here.

Orion Multisystems Deskside Cluster

2005-03-29T11:30:00.000-05:00

NB: This just popped into my in-box... I might just have to stop in to see this little gem.

Orion Multisystems is bringing Personal Supercomputing to Boston!
Be one of the first to see the 96-processor deskside Orion cluster workstation at the upcoming Bio-IT World Conference + Expo taking place May 17-19, 2005 at The Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA.

So come join us at our first Bio-IT World event and remember to visit us online at http://www.orionmultisystems.com.

Register online at http://www.bio-itworldexpo.com/live/26/register by May 16, 2005 to receive a 25% conference discount or a FREE Exhibit Only Pass. Use the Orion Multisystems PRIORITY CODE: B0623.

For further details, download the conference brochure today!
Visit http://www.bio-itworldexpo.com/live/26/events/26BOS05A/conference/CC881012.

WITH YOUR FREE EXHIBIT ONLY PASS YOU MAY ALSO ATTEND THESE GREAT KEYNOTES:

- Tim Berners-Lee, Director, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Senior Research Scientist, CSAIL, MIT

- J. Craig Venter, PhD, Founder & Chairman of the Board, The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), President & Founder, J. Craig Venter Science Foundation (JCVSF) and President & Founder, The J. Craig Venter Institute

For more full keynote details go to
http://www.bio-itworldexpo.com/live/26/events/26BOS05A/keynotes.

We look forward to seeing you at Bio-IT World Conference + Expo in Boston and please make sure to stop by Booth# 517 during your visit.

Sincerely,
ORION MULTISYSTEMS
http://www.bio-itworldexpo.com/live/26/events/26BOS05A/exposition/exhibitorinfo//QMONYA04N9O2

*NOTE: Valid for new registrations only. This offer cannot be redeemed for cash or used in conjunction with any other offer. All registration fees are non-refundable and credentials are non-transferable.

Having a bad day working on your cluster?

2005-03-27T19:53:00.000-05:00

The folks organizing ClusterWorld Summit in May want to hear from you about "Why Clusters Suck?" Seriously though, this is a way to contribute to the Cluster Agenda which will be developed at the ClusterWorld Summit. The Agenda will become a road map that details best practices and help navigate the important choice points facing users of cluster technology.

Excellent Cluster Resource

2005-03-27T19:36:00.000-05:00

ClusterWorld Magazine is a fantastic resource for both new and experienced Cluster admins. This month's issue has a great article on MDS, the Globus Monitoring and Discovery System.

More @Homes

2005-03-25T22:07:00.000-05:00

Einstein@Home, a grid project searching for the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein nearly a century ago, was launched on my birthday (Feb 19). 50,000 people have downloaded Einstein@Home and, according to NewScientist.com, more than 1,000 people a day are still joining.

PlanetQuest is another grid project based on BOINC, the same open-source engine as SETI@Home. Clients with the PlanetQuest client installed will process packages of data collected from telescopes around the world with the ultimate goal of finding new planets. One cool thing about PlanetQuest is they will let you name planets found through computation performed on your computer. How cool would it be to send a probe to Planet Roberta? ;-)

Quiet Supercomputing

2005-03-24T07:41:00.000-05:00

Sounds like an oxymoron to me...

However, Microway just announced WhisperStation, a 64-bit workstation that is so quiet you might not even know it's on!

HPC Events for May 2005

2005-03-24T07:22:00.000-05:00

May 1-6, 20
Networld + Interop 2005
Las Vegas, NV

May 2-4, 2005
NSDI 2005 Symposium
Boston, MA

May 4-6, 2005
Workshop on Patterns in High Performance Computing
Champaign-Urbana, IL

May 9-12, 2005
Cluster Computing And Grid
Cardiff, UK

May 9-12, 2005
International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications
(ICCSA 2005)
Singapore

May 10-12, 2005
International Conference on Biologically Inspired Computing and Computers in Biology (BICCIB'05)
Banff, Alberta, Canada

May 16-19, 2005
Cray User Group: Petroglyphs to Petaflops
Albuquerque, New Mexico

May 17-19, 2005
Bio-IT World Conference & Expo
Boston, MA

May 22-25, 2005
Gelato Federation May 2005 Meeting
"Understanding Your Itanium System to Maximize Performance"
San Jose, CA

May 23-25, 2005
3rd Annual National Conference for High Performance Computing Technology
Knoxville, TN

Grid Cafe

2005-03-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

I just stumbled upon this site: Grid Cafe

It's a wonderful resource from CERN that will teach you what a Grid is, how it works, and what it can do. There is also a brief history section and a good description of how Grids are used at CERN.

I strongly encourage anyone new to the concept of Grid to check it out.

Apple Cluster Seminar Recap

2005-03-23T12:11:00.000-05:00

I attended a very informative seminar held by Apple Computer on High Performance Computing in the Sciences. The speakers were Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, Director of the Terascale Computing Facility at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Kevin Kelleher, a sys admin from Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Mark McInnis from Apple, and two speakers from Etnus, makers of the TotalView Debugger.

My overall impressions are:

1. System X is a hot machine.
With 1100 Dual Processor 2.3 GHz Apple Xserve servers, System X is #7 on the Top 500 Supercomputer List and is capable of 12.25 Teraflops. It's also hot in temperature -- VA Tech had to spend $500K on a Liebert XDV (extreme-density vertical cooling) system to keep System X from overheating. If the cooling system fails it takes only seconds for the computer room to reach 150 degrees F.

2. System X is affordable.
VA Tech paid about $5.7 million for System X. This figure is well within reach for many academic and government institutions as well as corporate budgets.

3. System X is easy to use.
Using Mac OS X Panther, the basic interface to the cluster is the user friendy Mac UI that we all know and love. There is a lot of software available for OS X, probably more scientific programs are available for OS X right now than for Itanium 2. There is MPI support, great math libraries, and of course, OS X is really a FreeBSD variant, so all the Unix tools are there as well!

If you want to know more about System X, see:
http://www.tcf.vt.edu

If you want to know more about the Apple Xserve G5, see:
http://www.apple.com/xserve/

Apple Clusters

2005-03-20T21:43:00.000-05:00

Apple Computer is hosting a seminar on High Performance Computing in the Sciences... it's a multi-city tour. I'll be attending the one in New York tomorrow. Look here to see if the tour is coming to a city near you!

Strategies for Grid Application Enablement

2005-03-20T10:28:00.000-05:00

IBM has defined six strategies for grid application enablement.

In a nutshell:
Strategy 1: Batch Anywhere
Strategy 2: Independent Concurrent Batch
Strategy 3: Parallel Batch
Strategy 4: Service
Strategy 5: Parallel Services
Strategy 6: Tightly Coupled Parallel Programs

Teaching about Clusters and Grids

2005-03-20T10:05:00.000-05:00

I found an interesting paper about how to structure a college course on Clusters... There is a similar one on Grids on the ACM website, but I believe you need to be a member of their Digital Library to access it. My alma mater is still teaching students to program in COBOL!!?!??! Get out there and teach a class at your local college or university!

Is that a Cluster under your desk, or are you just happy to see me?

2005-03-18T22:20:00.000-05:00

This has been on the market for a while... I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who is actually using one.

Books on my nightstand...

2005-03-18T21:51:00.000-05:00

Two new books on Linux Clusters that are keeping me up late...

High Performance Linux Clusters: With Oscar, Rocks, openMosix, and MPI (Nutshell Handbooks) by Joseph D. Sloan

Beowulf Cluster Computing with Linux, Second Edition by William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, Thomas Sterling

High Performance Computing Events - April 2005

2005-03-18T12:16:00.000-05:00

April 2-8, 2005: HPC 2005: The 13th High Performance Computing Symposium
San Diego, CA
April 4, 2005: 19th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium
Denver, CO
April 11-13, 2005: HPC User Forum
Location: Sundance, UT
April 12-14, 2005: National High Performance Computing and Communications Council 19th Annual HPC Conference
Newport, RI
April 25-28, 2005: 6th International Conference on Linux Clusters: the HPC Revolution 2005
Chapel Hill, NC
April 26-27, 2005: Computational Engineering and Science Conference
Washington, DC

451 Group says software licensing hampering commercial grid adoption

2005-03-18T10:15:00.000-05:00

See: http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3490886 for more information.

For those of you interested in Scientific apps, both Matlab and Mathematica offer reasonably priced cluster licensing... well, at least reasonable relative to their standard pricing.

Save the Grids!

2005-03-16T21:41:00.000-05:00

The National Collaboratories program, part of the Department of Energy's Office of Science, is being threatened by budget cuts. Carl Kesselman, Globus co-founder, said "The termination of the National Collaboratories program will have an enormously disruptive effect on national and international eScience projects, effectively ceasing all research, development and support for large amounts of distributed systems and collaborative software."

Cuts to this program mean that the entity that developed things like GridFTP, AccessGrid, and the Java CoG will essentially disappear.

For Carl's open letter to the Globus community and to learn more about what you can do to help, see: http://www-unix.globus.org/mail_archive/discuss/2005/02/msg00441.html

Digipede Technologies .NET-based grid solution

2005-03-16T21:21:00.000-05:00

Digipede Technologies is offering a Microsoft .NET-based grid computing solution. The Team Edition allows for up to 20 "agents", while the Professional Edition for an "unlimited" number.

More information:
http://www.digipede.net

SGI has a grid strategy

2005-03-16T21:18:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well... my 'friends' over at SGI claim to have a grid strategy...

http://www.gridcomputingplanet.com/news/article.php/3490071

IBM Rents out BlueGene

2005-03-11T21:13:00.000-05:00

It looks like IBM is following Sun's lead and offering compute time on BlueGene...

See http://www.gridcomputingplanet.com/news/article.php/3489256 for more information.

2005-03-10T16:42:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the first post on Grid and Cluster Computing! The purpose of this blog is to keep those interested in Grid and Cluster Computing up-to-date on news and events regarding these topics and to provide a place for collaboration and discussion.

Enjoy!
Roberta