The IBM Sequoia Supercomputer blows my (tiny) mind

A couple of days ago, IBM issued a press release (and here at NNSA) detailing their latest efforts in High Performance Computing (HPC) and Super Computing. The 'Sequoia' Super Computer will be designed to achieve a sustained 20 Petaflop (a staggering 20 Quadrillion Floating point operations per second). The Sequoia will primarily be used to by the US DoE for simulation (Model Verification and Validation and Uncertainty quantification) of Nuclear weapon stockpile and test scenarios.

The numbers on this machine are completely staggering, this single machine will be 15 times faster than the most powerful supercomputer today (currently held by Roadrunner) and will deliver more computing power than the top500 combined. Some mind bending figures supplied by IBM include:

• Sequoia will have 1.6 petabytes of memory, 96 racks, 98,304 compute nodes, and 1.6 million cores. Though orders of magnitude more powerful than such predecessor systems as ASC Purple and BlueGene/L, Sequoia will be 160 times more power efficient than Purple and 17 times more than BlueGene/L.
• With a speed of 20 petaflops Sequoia is expected to be the most powerful supercomputer in the world and will be approximately over 10-15 times faster than today’s most powerful system. To put this into perspective, if each of the 6.7 billion people on earth had a hand calculator and worked together on a calculation 24 hours per day, 365 days a year, it would take 320 years to do what Sequoia will do in one hour.

In the world of distributed computing however, the petaflop barrier has pushed further and further on. Folding@Home (Stanford University) as of January 2009 has been running a sustained 4.7 petaflops (the first computing project of any type to break the 4 petaflop barrier). A large amount of credit for this must be due to the amazing Cell processor in the Sony PS3. The Cell BBE in the PS3 is effectively the same processor used in the current super computer leader (Roadrunner).

Note: Which reminds me, I was going to string together 2 PS3's in a small cluster. I will put up my efforts for this asap. :P

Anyway, the new IBM machine will be fully installed and ready to run by 2012.

Muxtape is back!

So it looks like Muxtape is back (all be it in a much reduced form and with a different emphasis). It has been a while since it was shutdown...and I thought it was for good, so its good to see them bounce back with something.

This time it looks like the emphasis is on up and coming and unsigned bands. Im still with this idea, I like discovering new bands...but I cant help feel a little sad that you cant upload your own playlist now.

Check out their blog.

Update on Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 12:56PM by Paul

So Muxtape is back up and we are all getting back into it, like I said, I love discovering new music and Muxtape will be one of the best out there for getting you into that whole scene, but if you are also interested in how the site got itself to together after the initial lockdown then this blog post (from one of the main developers of the new Muxtape) should fill you in on how the site is structured now.

The developers decided to drop all the PHP elements and run with Ruby on Rails for their main web framework. They also go onto mention some of the other technologies they are using for the new incarnation of the site and drop in a forthcoming API.

Im really looking forward to the site growing again! sounds like they are really designing it for the future in mind...I think its going to be great.

Getting Back On The Horse - Getting back into programming

A few weeks ago, I started getting back into programming after a long absence. Its strange, but at University I did a BEng in Computer and Electronic Systems and a MSc in Computer and Internet technologies, but I always considered  programming as a necessary evil. I just used it as a way of getting something else done. It was nothing more than an Engineering tool for me (just like a calculator, slide-rule, paper, pen...etc). I used whatever programming language that the task called for, including Java, C, C++ .net...etc (anything and everything). I had no preference or favored language and I never really gave it much thought.

However recently I have been feeling an itch to get into something other than the work im involved with at the moment (I'm a 'Network Engineer' and at the moment its a means to an end and in no way what I want to do for any longer than is necessary...I feel the telecommunications industry is quickly becoming a commodity industry with no redeeming features, everything is done as nastily and cheaply as possible). So, I thought about what I do to keep myself sane and something I could do in my own time and something that I could do right now! (and hopefully would become useful if I were ever thinking of going into Software development)

I have always had a soft spot for Mac's (they were always cheaper...in the long term and I loved the simplicity and power of OSX) and I used them right through university, got an iphone and fell in love with its capabilities. It really revolutionised the mobile industry and has become an fully fledged platform in its own right. I think of it more as a platform (just like OSX, Windows, Linux, UNIX...etc) with a phone application to boot. Its got so much potential its looks like an exciting device to be involved with. So I decided if I was going to get back into programming that I my as well direct my efforts and try some application development for OSX and the iphone. So because I have a bit of a background in C, C++, Ada and Java, I thought I would add a superset to C and start learning Objective-C with an aim to get something together for the iphone or OSX.

I must admit, it has been perhaps close to 2 years (could even be 3) since I was involved in programming of any type. My last effort was a C++ simulation (discrete event simulation) for a telecommunications project. Its was a program that was in support of my thesis and there was nothing elegant about it. It was a very basic terminal application (if you could even call it an application) and just spewed out its results....its was fucking ugly....and it always bothered me. I didn't get the time to do anything special with it. It was simply a very crude simulation for some half baked idea I had about GPRS at the time. So Im going back to the drawing board....going back to C/C++ and picking it all up again....sounds weird, but after 2 years you would be surprised at how much you forget!! Its just because I was not thinking of it for quite some time.

Books

So I started with the original C bible.

• K&R C Programming - This was a great book....probably the only C book you will ever need. I remember this was my go to book for the basic C syntax, and I already had it, so I dusted it off and started flicking through it.

Now I needed some other resources to effectively pick up Objective-C, so I installed iphone dev environment for xcode and downloaded all the documentation explaining the framework, and that was fine...but I was still looking or a softer introduction to Obj-C So I thought I would post a little list of some of the things I have found usefull so far:

• Programming in Objective-C 2.0 - Because quite honestly nothing beats a book when it comes to learning anything. Programming and software development is something you just stop thinking about when you are away from the computer. I found some good reviews on this book and it pitches itself as a book for everyone (beginners through to experts). Its good to have a book that you can use as a reference after you have run through the it for the first time. I would really recommend it, its been a great one so far.

Web Sites

Quite honestly some of the best resources are on the web. They are normally from programmers who have already spent many years battling with the language and all its little quirks. Not to mention that they are free.

• BecomeAnXcoder - This is a great little resource. Its essentially a free ebook, that helps you get to grips with the Xcode development environment and Objective C. Its a very soft introduction (meant for beginner programmers by the looks of it), and worth a read in your spare time. I feel its always good to have bookmarks like this so that you can browse during your downtime.
• LabNotes - Is a follow on from the one above which goes into some more advanced topics, such as recursion and other things that a beginner wont necessarily want/need to cover straight away.
• Learn Coca (Cocadevcentral) - great free resource for Coca developers and beginners alike. There are a few introductory articles there, as well as links to Coca related blogs and the coca community.
• Object Orientated Programming and Objective C language - Great introduction to the principles of object orientated languages and at the same time introduces Objective C. I find this text quite hard to read at times (In several places I founds I had to re-read some parts of the text, and even then it left me with a WTF feeling, but its still great.
• http://www.otierney.net/objective-c.html - Is another great introduction. Its really succinct and flows really nicely, great for dipping in and out of. 

Anyway, there is some things to start you off on, and I have certainly found them useful so far...and perhaps they may be useful to you too?!

Perfect Espresso (my secret...cheat!)

When I was younger, I worked in a coffee shop for about 3 years (during part of school and university) and as a result I have become a bit of a coffee fiend/snob when it comes to the craft.

I have tried literally hundreds of verities of coffee, obsessed over silly details such as the coffee grind consistency, correct tamping pressure, getting the right roast, using the right water, getting the temperature into the correct range...etc, all in search of the perfect espresso and even after 3 solid years of doing this 9-5 you still sometimes come away with mixed results. Either the crema is not quite right (perhaps indicating the pressure or grind was not quite right) or its too bitter, or its too cold, or its just a disaster. Getting the perfect espresso has always been quite a bit of work.

But I recently got an Nespresso machine and a collection of the Nespresso coffee's. They really do produce the best, most consistent and tasty espressos out there without the mess and fuss of traditional machines (such as my automatic Gaggia Classic or traditional pump and lever systems like the La Pavoni).

So if you are looking for the perfect espresso every time (wow that sounds like a sales pitch!) then consider looking at the Nespresso series.

More crema porn:

2009 Year of the Electric Car?

Looks like 2009 may be the year that the electric car makes it big time! Top 10 electric cars bound for the US. This is exciting...but Im wondering what will become of the industry over the recession period?