This week, I am attending the annual SC08 conference.  For 2 decades, the tradition in HPC is to announce and demonstrate new products at the SC conference, and there is a lot to absorb. 

For me, the event started with a 2-day HP user conference, attracting some of HP’s largest HPC customers.  It was a very full 2 days, with lectures on many subjects from customers, Intel, AMD, software development companies, and of course HP.  Even though I work here, I learned a lot about projects in other parts of the company.

At the SC08 show, I saw my 1^st HP POD – portable optimized datacenter – a 40-foot-long shipping container on the outside, and a self-contained computer facility on the inside.  This excellently-designed mobile facility can contain 3500 servers or 12,000 disk drives, in standard 19” racks.  Just provide a flat location, power, chilled water, and a network cable, and you have a new computer room.

To make the week more interesting, AMD announced the new Opteron Shanghai processor – higher clock speed, bigger cache, faster Northbridge, and improved performance:power ratio.

One of the good things about big companies is that they spawn startups.  This year, a startup company announced a new HPC architecture at SC08.  Nearly all the employees are my friends and previous HP co-workers.   Check out www.conveycomputer.com