Christopher G. Willard Ph.D.

Tabor Research surveyed the High Productivity Computing user community to complete its first Site Budget Allocation Map, a look at how HPC users divide and spend their HPC budgets. We surveyed users on their spending in seven top-level categories: hardware, software, facilities, staffing, services, utility computing, and other. Each category was further divided into constituent…

As published in InsideHPC General Business Supercomputing<br />Google’s Acquisition of PeakStream Provides Evidence of the New HPC It’s an increasingly common pattern in HPC. A small company bursts onto the scene with an innovative technology that improves productivity for a category of applications. Seeking to lock out competitors by tying up the boost in price/performance…

Buy on Rumor, Sell on News (or Speculate on Rumor, Analyze on News) French website Capital.fr reported on July 26 that HP had entered negotiations to acquire Groupe Bull for about $990 million. This report was not confirmed by either company, and no sources were mentioned, thus we have a classic case of an unconfirmed…

As published in HPCWire Simpson Strong-Tie, Tabor Research’s current featured user site, is a leading designer and manufacturer of construction products and a relatively new user of High Productivity Computing (HPC) products. Though new to HPC, Simpson has managed to leverage a small Linux Networx cluster (5 nodes, 56 GB of memory) in ways that…

The difference between blades and clusters, or rather between blade-based distributed-memory systems and rack-mounted distributed-memory systems, has led from time to time to the following question: Are the two types of systems variations of a common type or two separate types? (Or more simply: Are blades clusters?) Table 1 compares data on blade-based systems and…

As published in HPCWire In 2007 Tabor Research established the supply-side and demand-side research methodologies to determine the size and dynamics of the High Productivity Computing (HPC) market. From a technology perspective, we are investigating the products and services that complement the server or cluster portion of the HPC market, in order to establish the…

As published in HPCWire SGI announced this afternoon that it has purchased the “software, patents, technology and expertise” of Linux Networx Inc. (LNXI) through an all-stock transaction. Although there has been no official statement saying so, LNXI is believed to have shut it doors. However, some of LNXI’s technology, particularly the Clusterworx Advanced software suite,…

As published in HPCWire This week saw the inaugural meeting of HPC Horizons, a new community of HPC users, vendors, and policymakers dedicated to collaborative discussion of forward-looking topics that push the boundaries of High Productivity Computing. The two-day conference had 125 attendees and featured speakers that represented both traditional and emerging HPC applications. Tabor…

As published in HPCWire Traditional HPC and Edge HPC — The Same Only Different Tabor Research is in the midst of conducting in-depth end-user interviews with organizations running or considering Edge HPC applications (see http://www.taborresearch.com/edgemarket.html for Edge HPC definition). As we have completed the initial interviews several similarities and difference between the two branches of…

As published in HPCWire The announcement of each new TOP500 list and especially those with systems that break the triple order of magnitude barrier in flops tend to get me thinking about the meaning of the term “supercomputer.” This term has been with us at least since the 1970s (if you know of any earlier…