And the Future is Already Here
by Michael Hay on November 24, 2009
So I have been beating the drum of special purpose computing or hybrid computing through several posts and talking about it as something which will eventually happen. Well with CSIRO’s recent deployment of a hybrid compute platform that uses NVidia’s Tesla processor cores, Intel Xeons, and a Hitachi NAS Platform system serving 80TB of Hitachi AMS storage, it means that the future is here today. The expecation is that this system will be on the Top500 list of supercomputers in the world, and may even oust physically larger systems which do not make use of hybrid compute concepts. Further from compute to NAS to block storage the combined system takes advantage of a many core or hybrid approach through and through. To achieve development of custom applications or codes for their simulations the scientists and programmers will make use of both CUDA and compilers from the Portland Group which are optimized for compilations on many core hybrid architectures.
