More Shameless Self-Aggrandizement

Quick note that a certain journal article has been covered by both International Science Grid This Week and HPCwire.

The HPCwire article is especially interesting as it calls us out for asking the tough questions. So be it -- HPC requires a balanced environment for productive science. You can't print a hundred terabyte dataset, nor can you build a hundred trillion pixel power wall. So if you need to build a machine that generates large datasets, you also need to plan for a post-processing environment capable of extracting the science. The exact mix of hardware, software, and skinny guys will depend on the site, but it's not something that good HPC sites ignore.

And yes, I realize that those questions are substantially less tough for me at a dot com, as compared to the co-authors who are at various dot edu and dot gov sites. Of course, that mix of employers also indicates that a lot of sites are thinking about this and "doing it right".

Errata and What's in a Name

A little behind the scenes at ROC....

I really do write these entries over coffee. My self-imposed time limit for blogging is about 20 minutes, so I can usually queue up a couple short articles or part of a code example before I need to go back to earning a living. The short time limit insures that I can write throughout the week, but also means splitting the longer posts and code examples across writing sessions. I think this works OK for the topics I'm posting on -- with programming there's not any urgency to be current like a political blog would face (poor Andrew Sullivan).

As a result of the 20-and-out policy, my (lack of) proofreading may allow errors to slip through. For minor typos and thinkos, I will just make corrections to the published articles silently. If I need to make a major change to a code example, I'll make a note of it on the post for those who have already cut-and-pasted the broken version. If I somehow manage to post a non-working code example or tip, I will self-flagellate with a length of cat5 cable.

While I'm on this topic, the name Results Over Coffee was inspired by a giveaway. The 2010 GPU Technology Conference gave away coffee mugs that featured the phrase "Results over coffee, not overnite". Unlike most conference chotchkies, the GTC mugs are pretty nice (insulated ceramic), and I often use mine when working in my home office. I happened to be drinking from it on the same day I was figuring out what to call the blog I'd be writing 20min at a time. The coincidence seemed too good to ignore, so I borrowed part of the phrase for a blog title.

A trip to register.com later, here we are. Still on my things to do list is blogging some coffee reviews. As a preview, I'm doing this entry over a cup of Barefoot Coffee's Michicoy, which is absolutely wonderful out of a press pot. Life is good.

Local Boy Does Well

A quick note that the whitepaper version of an article I contributed to garnered mentions by Vizworld and InsideHPC last week.

Thanks to Wes for being leader and chief cat-herder -- getting all of us on a phone call is a herculean effort under normal circumstances, and it was even more challenging because I was in China working on Nebulae during the critical edits. It was an honor to be involved with a who's-who of HPC visualization.

First Post: 2010 in Review

My name is Dale Southard. I'm a senior solution architect with NVIDIA, where I cover primarily high-performance computing and cloud computing. Results Over Coffee (ROC) is my blog, and I'll be posting on HPC and Cloud as well as some how-to information on programming GPUs, integrating them in Linux clusters, and whatever else I can cover over a cup of coffee. When I'm posting here, I'm speaking for me, not NVIDIA (even if I am posting about NVIDIA hardware or software).

I've often compared my work at NVIDIA to being a professional debugger -- I spend a lot of time working with very new hardware and software in new and complicated deployments. It's a lot of work, a lot of fun, and I feel lucky to be doing it for NVIDIA. In 2010, my personal high points were:

• Spent three weeks in China for debug/tuning the top500 runs on Nebulae
• Gave a talk at GTC on the above experience
• theRegister wrote a mostly-accurate article on above talk
• Spent a lot of time getting GPUs working in the Amazon EC2 cloud
• Spent a few days doing debug/tuning for the top500 runs on Keeneland
• Gave a presentation on GPU Cloud Computing at SuperComputing
• Had an interview with HPCintheCloud on GPUs and HPC (on cell phone, in traffic)
• Co-wrote an article on HPC visualization for IEEE with a lot of smart people
• And a bunch of other things that I can't talk about yet....

I have long viewed GPU Computing as a disruptive technology for high-performance computing and I am excited to have a ringside while it unfolds. ROC will be my place to share thoughts, tips, and hopefully have some fun.

So, welcome to ROC. There's more to come...