So way back in the good old days, programming a single core CPU in a high performance manner was a challenge. Compilers promised much and delivered small fractions of maximum theoretical performance. To get nearly optimal performance, you had to hand code assembly language routines. You would never be able to achieve 100% utilization of the processor capabilities, but you might be able to sufficiently balance memory operations with floating point and integer operations so that you were utilizing a sizeable fraction of the chips subsystem capabilities.

According to the MEDC site, 505 applications were turned in for mostly commercial efforts. 505… The mind boggles. Of those 505, 139 are commercialization. Another smattering are also commercial, though hidden. Call that 150 commercial ones. In all the previous competitions; the MLSC (Michigan Life Science Corridor), the MTTC (Michigan Tri Technology Corridor), the commercial side was given less than a serious consideration. A token gesture might be a better way to describe it.

Platform consolidation is in full swing in HPC, has been for a while. This is an economic reality. The platforms we are being told by ISVs, that will be supported into the future are Windows and Linux. We don’t see much new AIX support. It is simply not a volume platform. Nor do we see much new HP/UX support. It is also not a volume platform. Similarly, we don’t see much new Solaris 10 support.

This is not a simple question to answer. It likely will change a few times over the course of time. But we can be reasonably sure that their won’t be widespread installations of Irix, AIX, HP/UX and others of their ilk. There are many reasons for this, technological, legal, business, marketing, and so forth. Looking at the top 500 list, it isn’t a high risk bet that Linux will remain in some form or the other.

Is high performance computing a critical path technology? Is it a technology that you cannot do without? This is a question some potential partners were discussing this evening. Very interesting question. If HPC is not critical, then demand for it should be quite moderate. If it is not critical, then the market would have basically replacement level growth rates. If end users did not see a value in HPC, they wouldn’t use it, as their time would be spent elsewhere.

Someone gets it. I can’t say much more now, or even point to who gets it. Then again, with all companies and decisions comes baggage. While they get the idea, there is this little manner of the baggage they attached to their grid to fix another problem. Customers bringing application code over to their grid, are going to be in for a surprise. Sometimes your baggage has been creatively destroyed by other newer baggage, and you have to live with that.

I know, its dangerous to Post Before Coffee (PBC) in the morning. It increases the possibility of missing critical features of an argument, and there tends to be more bloviation, stream of approximately conciousness, and so forth. I read an article this morning from the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.com site that evoked many emotions and thoughts. This article was entitled “Silicon Valley Start-Ups See Cash Everywhere” with several basic points being made:

Competition is in full swing. This is the first year it is (mostly) well designed to make a difference to Michigan. Kudos for the folks that resisted the pressure to make this identical to the MTTC/MLSC of prior years. You can still see echos of that pressure, but I expect this to be a very exciting year with interesting proposals that will have a net positive benefit for Michigan if some are funded.

SGI announced another RIF. Thats more good people tossed onto the street. Thats good technology about to be or already dumped. SGI and I go way back, to 1993 when I started running molecular dynamics simulations on SGI machines. These machines were fast (those R3000’s were like butta …). I liked them so much, and liked playing with them so much that I joined the company straight out of graduate school.

IDC is out with its estimated numbers, based upon 3 quarters of data, and one quarter of estimated data. The summary is amazing. 20+% CAGR for this market. It is about 9B$ (yes, that is a B meaning billion or 10^9, which is 10**9 for old timers). It is growing about 1.8B$/year at the present. Clusters are growing 60-90% per year. And so on. This is tremendously exciting. HPC demand is huge and getting larger.