Jaguar Chases Roadrunner, but Can’t Grab Top Spot on Latest List of World’s TOP500 Supercomputers

MANNHEIM, Germany, BERKELEY, Calif., and KNOXVILLE, Tenn.—The 32nd edition of the closely watched list of the world’s TOP500 supercomputers has just been issued, with the 1.105 petaflop/s IBM supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory holding on to the top spot it first achieved in June 2008.

The Los Alamos system, nicknamed Roadrunner, was slightly enhanced since June and narrowly fended off a challenge by the Cray XT5 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory called Jaguar. The system, only the second to break the petaflop/s barrier, posted a top performance of 1.059 petaflop/s in running the Linpack benchmark application. One petaflop/s represents one quadrillion floating point operations per second.

Both of the systems are at national laboratories operated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Seven of the top 10 systems on the newest TOP500 list are located at DOE facilities. Nine of the top 10 supercomputers are located in the United States. The most powerful system outside the U.S. is the Chinese-built Dawning 5000A at the Shanghai Supercomputer Center. It is the largest system which can be operated with Windows HPC 2008 operating system.

The TOP500 list, which is issued twice a year, will again be the subject of a session at the SC08 conference being held Nov. 15-21 in Austin, Texas. Complete information about the TOP500 list can be found at: top500.org.

Just as the performance levels have increased dramatically, so have the costs of running and cooling such large systems. To help assess the energy efficiency of supercomputers, the TOP500 list is now tracking actual power consumption of supercomputers in consistent fashion. Not only is it the most powerful supercomputer, but Roadrunner is also one of the most energy efficient systems on the TOP500. Roadrunner is based on the IBM QS22 blades which are built with advanced versions of the processor in the Sony PlayStation 3. These nodes are connected with a commodity InfiniBand network.

Here are some other highlights from the November 2008 list:

• A total of 379 systems (75.8 percent) are now using Intel processors. This is virtually unchanged from six months ago (375 systems, 75 percent). Intel continues to provide the processors for the largest share of TOP500 systems.
• The IBM Power processors and the AMD Opteron family are almost tied as second most common processor family with 60 and 59 systems each (12 percent and 11.8 percent). Both had only minor changes from six months ago.
• Quad-core processor based systems have taken over the TOP500 quite rapidly. Already 336 systems are using them. 153 systems are using dual-core processors, and only four systems still use single core processors. Already seven systems use IBMs advanced Sony PlayStation 3 processor with nine cores.
• HP took over the lead in systems with 209 systems (41.8 percent) over IBM with 188 systems (37.6 percent). IBM had 210 systems (42.0 percent) six months ago, compared to HP with 183 systems (36.6 percent). But IBM still stays ahead by overall installed performance.

Highlights from the Rest of the Top 10:

• The No. 3 system called Pleiades is a new SGI Altix ICE system installed at NASA Ames in Moffett Field, Calif.., narrowly grabbing this spot with 487 teraflop/s.
• The No. 4 system is the IBM BlueGene/L system installed at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), with a Linpack performance of 478.2 Tflop/s.
• At No. 5 is a newer version of the same type of IBM BlueGene/P system installed at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and it achieved 450.3 Tflop/s.
• The No. 6 system is installed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas and recently received faster processors. Nicknamed Ranger, it is built by Sun using SunBlade x6420servers and achieved 433.2 TFlop/s.
• The No. 7 system, called Franklin, is the second new Cray XT5 system. It is installed at DOE’s NERSC Center at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and achieved 266.3 Tflop/s.
• The No. 8 system is a Cray XT4 system installed at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It achieved a Linpack performance of 205 Tflop/s.
• The No. 9 system is the enlarged Sandia/Cray Red Storm system. It is installed at DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories and achieved 204.2 Teraflop/s.

General highlights from the Top 500 since the June 2008 edition:

• The entry level to the list moved up to the 12.64 Tflop/s mark on the Linpack benchmark, compared to 9.0 Tflop/s six months ago.
• The last system on the current list would have been listed at position 267 in the previous TOP500 just six months ago.
• Total combined performance of all 500 systems has grown to 16.95 Pflop/s, compared to 11.7 Pflop/s six months ago and 6.97 Pflop/s one year ago.
• The U.S. is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems with 291 of the 500 systems (up from 257). The European share (151 systems – down from 184) is settling down after having risen for some time, but is still substantially larger then the Asian share (unchanged at 47 systems).
• Dominant countries in Asia are Japan with 18 systems (down from 22), China with 16 systems (up from 12), India with 8 systems (up from 6).
• In Europe, UK remains the No. 1 with 45 systems (53 six months ago). Germany fell steeply but is still in the No. 2 spot with 24 systems (46 six months ago).

The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Resource - TOP500

NCSoft's Tabula Rasa To Cease Operations In February

Following the departure of Richard Garriott from NCsoft, the MMO-focused publisher has announced that its PC MMO Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa will be shut down February 28, 2009.

The news was delivered via the game's official site in a letter signed "The Tabula Rasa Team." The closure was pinned simply on a failure for the title to meet its financial targets.

"Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we've achieved that goal," it reads in part. "Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected."

From January 10 through the game's shuttering, subscription fees will be waived for all players. Despite the game's imminent demise, NCsoft promised, "We'll be doing some really fun things in Tabula Rasa, and we plan to make staying on a little longer worth your while."

Furthermore, Tabula Rasa players who were already subscribed at the time today's announcement were made will receive a variety of perks relating to other NCsoft products, including three free months of City of Heroes and Lineage II, and upcoming beta access for Aion.

Resource - Gamasutra

Final Judgment — SCO Loses, Owes $3,506,526

"SCO has finally lost to Novell, now that Judge Kimball has entered final judgment against SCO. Of course, this is SCO we're talking about. There's still the litigation in bankruptcy court, which allowed this case to resume so that they could figure out just how much SCO owes, which is $3,506,526, if I calculated the interest properly, $625,486.90 of which will go into a constructive trust. And then there's the possibility that SCO could seek to have the judgment overturned in the appeals courts, or even the Supreme Court when that fails. Of course, they need money to do that and they don't really have much of that any more. Remember how Enderle, O'Gara and company told us that SCO was sure to win? I wonder how many people have emailed them to say, 'I told you so.'"
Resource - Slashdot

SGI Designs Atom-based Supercomputer

A 3U-high package houses 90 blocks. "A few more blocks can be added because the actual package is slightly deeper," SGI said.

The substrate mounted with the Atom N330 and the block composed of two such substrates. The substrate is mounted with actual chips, but the block is a mockup.

A close-up picture of the substrate. The slender chip on the left is the Atom N330. The big chip in the center is a controller IC. The four chips on the front side are memory chips.

Silicon Graphics Inc (SGI) of the US exhibited a concept model of a novel high performance computer (HPC) at Super Computing 2008 (SC08), an international convention and exhibition on HPCs.

The computer is being developed under the code name of "Project Molecule." The aim of the project is to "create a supercomputer featuring ultrahigh-density, low power consumption and low cost using the ultimate commodity processor that can be easily programmed," SGI said.

The commodity processor used in this concept model is the "Atom N330," which Intel Corp developed for mobile devices called "MID (Mobile Internet Device)."

SGI exhibited a chassis, which corresponds to a 15cm-high (3U) rack. And, in the chassis, 90 blocks that look like building blocks are laid out with little space left. The block has several square pores dimensioned about 5 x 5mm so that air from the air-cooling fan on the back of the package can pass through the pores.

The block consists of two 5 x 5mm substrates attached to each side of a pore structure used for air cooling by resin. Each of the substrates is mounted with microprocessors, LSIs for datapath control, and eight memory chips on two sides. The dual-core Atom is incorporated as a microprocessor. This atom is a 1.3GHz model and supports "x86-64" instruction set. Each substrate has a memory capacity of 2 Gbytes.

In order to achieve ultrahigh density, more than 180 microprocessors with CPU cores exceeding 360 are packed into the 3U rack. The power consumption of this Atom is as low as 10W, making it possible to array many blocks leaving small spaces for tiny air-cooling pores. The power consumption of the whole package is less than 2kW, according SGI.

"As the next step, we are planning to employ a liquid-cooling system and further improve the density by, for example, packing more than 10,000 CPU cores in one rack," the company said.

The Atom is a low power consumption microprocessor developed by Intel for use in MIDs. Intel explains that it is not suitable for complicated processing and only good for Web browsing and checking e-mail.

In respect to this point, SGI said, "We place priority on memory bandwidth, and the Atom's memory bandwidth is not small. A supercomputer based on this model will be intended exclusively for calculation, in which memory bandwidth is important."

IBM Corp's "Blue Gene" supercomputer was developed under a similar concept. The Blue Gene uses the "PowerPC 440" embedded microprocessor. SGI admits that there are some similarities between its concept model and the Blue Gene, but said "they are not the same." The biggest difference is in that the Atom microprocessor supports the x86-64 instruction set, which is designed for general PCs and servers.

In respect to its commercialization, "It has yet to be given the go-ahead. But once its commercialization has been decided, we will be able to develop a product in 15 to 18 months," SGI said.

Resource - Tech-On

Malaysia among top five with internet access in Asia Pacific

BANGKOK, Nov 19 (Bernama) -- Malaysia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Singapore are the most connected countries in the Asia Pacific region, with 55 per cent to 80 per cent of their populations having access to the Internet by 2007.

In contrast, the bottom five -- Myanmar, Timor-Leste, Tajikistan, Bangladesh and Cambodia -- have less than one per cent of their populationd using the Internet while the average for region is 20 per cent.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Unescap) said that despite significant progress that Asia and the Pacific had made in utilising information communication technology (ICT), a significant disparity still remained in access to the Internet between high-income and low-income countries.

It said the wide gap appeared despite its study which showed that both phone and Internet use had increased over the last five years since the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was first held in 2003.

"How to overcome this 'digital divide' is the focus of a meeting being held in Bangkok with participants compromising ICT experts from governments, the academia, UN and other international agencies and the private sector, including from Microsoft," Unescap said in a statement.

The agency said the number of mobile phone subscribers increased by nearly 70 times in South Asia between 2000 and 2007 and by over 40 times in Central Asia while in Southeast Asia, which has a relatively more developed market, the number of subscribers still grew by about 10 times.

"Yet, the growth is the fastest in the poorest countries in the region. The least developed countries in the region as a group had seen their mobile phone users increase by close to 80 times," it said.

The expert group meeting, WSIS+5 and Emerging Issues in Asia and the Pacific, is intended as a platform to discuss technical aspects of ICT development and solicit expert views on key issues -- such as problems with
infrastructure -- which need to be addressed at the regional level.

Among issues being discussed are the current status of ICT and the implementation of the WSIS Plan of Action in the Asia-Pacific region and key emerging issues that are standing in the way ICT connectivity in developing nations.

Also in the agenda is the integration of ICT in effective disaster risk reduction programmes, for example, by providing technical solutions such as region-wide early warning systems, and better communications systems to assist with disaster recovery. (Bernama)
Resource - UNESCAP

Asia-Pacific world’s largest broadband market, but wide gap in access, says UN

2 September 2008 – While some countries in Asia and the Pacific – the world’s largest broadband market – have high speed and affordable Internet access, the same cannot be said for most of the region’s poorer nations, the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said today.

In its Telecommunication/Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Indicators Report for Asia and the Pacific, the ITU states that Internet access in the region’s poor countries remains limited and predominantly low speed.

The report, released at the ITU Telecom Asia 2008 conference which kicked off today in Bangkok, also points out that the region is the world’s largest broadband market with a 39 per cent share of the world’s total at the end of 2007.

In terms of access, it notes that the region has made remarkable progress in the past few years, with subscriber numbers growing almost five-fold in five years, from 27 million at the beginning of 2003 to 133 million at the start of 2008.

The Republic of Korea leads the world in terms of the percentage of households with fixed broadband access. Along with Hong Kong and Japan, it also leads the world in terms of the proportion of households with fiber optic connections, which are essential for supporting the next generation of ultra high speed Internet applications.

Meanwhile, in most of the region’s low- and lower middle-income economies, high speed Internet access “is limited to urban areas at best, typically expensive, and often not available at all,” says the ITU.

“The regional broadband divide is striking, with poor economies having a close-to-zero broadband penetration, compared to that of rich economies where one in four persons is a broadband subscriber,” it adds.

The gap in available broadband speeds between rich and poor countries is as wide as broadband penetration. In Japan, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong, the minimum advertised broadband speed is faster than the maximum broadband speed in Cambodia, Tonga, Laos and Bangladesh.

The report also notes that Asia and the Pacific is home to almost half the world’s fixed telephone subscribers; has 42 per cent of the world’s Internet users; and has the largest mobile phone market share, with 1.4 billion mobile cellular subscribers. By mid-2008, China and India alone had over 600 and 280 million mobile cellular subscribers, respectively, representing close to a quarter of the world’s total.

In addition, text messaging is the predominant non-voice, mobile application in the region. Filipinos send a “staggering” 650 text messages per subscriber per month, the highest in the world.

Among other things, the report recommends that governments develop policies and incentives to narrow the broadband gap.

The theme of Telecom Asia 2008 is “New Generation, New Values” which pays tribute to the region’s reputation as a global leader for innovation and a burgeoning population of ICT users.

The opening sessions of the conference looked at the “Broadband Generation” of “New Users, New Needs and New Solutions,” “New Business Models” and “New User Interfaces.” The gathering will also address green solutions and approaches to the environment as well as promote the strengthening of emergency communications to save lives in the event of natural disasters.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré noted that Telecom Asia showcases the trends and technologies that define future global markets. “Asia is at the cutting edge, both in terms of pioneering technologies and the way the region interacts with these technologies to define new digital lifestyles,” Mr. Touré said.

“Yet, while some nations lead the world in defining, developing and deploying ICTs, others still strive to make basic products and services affordable and accessible to their populations. Despite the region’s wealth of technological skill and evident enthusiasm for the many benefits ICTs can offer, the digital divide remains a significant blight on Asia’s economic landscape,” he adde

Resource - UN

Radiolicious Brings AM/FM Radio to iPhones

n the war between radio and Internet-based technologies, Radiolicious is trying to build a business model by striking back on broadcasters' behalf. Radiolicious is a free downloadable player for iPhone users. Once on their wireless handsets, Radiolicious allows them to stream audio and Web content from any AM/FM station that is signed up to the service, at no cost to the iPhone user.

"Radiolicious is the third leg of the modern broadcasting stool, the other two being over-the-air transmission and the Web," said Rick Brancadora, an early affiliate. He is the CEO, licensee and GM of LifeRadio WIBG(AM), a Christian talk station that has signed up to Radiolicious.

"With more than 20 million iPhones out there, Radiolicious is a great way for us to grow our audience."

The technology

Radiolicious is a software application developed by MySimBook.com, a developer/marketer of awareness-based advertising products. The company is owned by Global Security Systems, also known in the radio industry for its FM Alert technology.

"Radiolicious is a truly native iPhone radio player," said Doug Daigle, co-founder of MySimBook. "It provides all of the Web streams, including WMA, from subscribing broadcasters directly to iPhone users."

Radiolicious works on all commercial wireless networks, including EDGE, WiFi and 3G. Besides delivering audio, it provides iPhone users with graphics and the ability to request songs, send comments and enter contests from their handsets.

Operationally, Radiolicious is simple; after subscribing to the service — usually by purchasing a subscription based on market size or bartering commercial airtime to MySimBook — the station logs onto MySimBook's business Web site and links their audio streams. They can also provide the other content described earlier and arrange for interactive traffic between their station's e-mails and Radiolicious users.

At the consumer end, "The user simply downloads a Radiolicious from the app store," said Daigle. "It is free to download, and there are no additional charges."

Stations are categorized by genre and location, making it easy for Radiolicious users to find the stations they want and add them to their Favorites list for fast access. Radiolicious subscribers can also access Internet-only audio streams, share music with friends and buy songs directly from iTunes while using the player.

"The mobile phone has profoundly changed how people interact with media when they're on foot or in their cars," he says. "Radiolicious makes it easy for broadcasters to reconnect to this audience; many of whom have forsaken conventional AM/FM radio for newer technologies."

Benefits

LifeRadio is based in Ocean City, N.J. It is licensed as a daytime AM, operating at 1,900 watts; it signs off every sunset to make way for clear channel KDKA. But WIBG runs on the Internet 24/7, and with its appearance on Radiolicious, the station says it has found a second way to keep reaching its audience at night without broadcasting.

"We are finding more and more people are tuning into our Web-based audio stream," said Brancadora. "With iPhone now included via Radiolicious, we've got the necessary second half of this one-two punch."

Being on Radiolicious isn't just a way around being a daytimer. "On the Web and Radiolicious, we have as big a footprint as ABC and CBS," Brancadora said. "But it's really Radiolicious that makes the difference, because we are now available on a portable medium unfettered by radio's physical limits."

To further promote LifeRadio online, Brancadora hopes to take advantage of blogging sites offered by Radiolicious, plus the system's two-way messaging capability.

"We are already a two-way station, because we're talk radio," he said. "Instant messaging is also proving to be big, which is where Radiolicious comes in. With this platform, people will be able to hear us all over America, and interact with us as well."

Resource - cellular-news