Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Category: Technology
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Reflections on SC08
“Cloud” was undoubtedly the buzz word of the conference. Like the word Grid in the past, cloud is now a tabula rasa on which research groups and companies are projecting their own definitions and spins. I was also pleased that HPCWire awarded its Editor’s Choice Award for best industry/government collaboration to the Microsoft/Intel Universal Parallel…
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SC: The Family Gathering
It’s “supercomputing week,” which means that almost everyone who can spell HPC and who can walk, drive, swim or fly will be in Austin, Texas during the week of November 16 for SC08. In short, it’s the place to see and be seen, or perhaps not to be seen if you are spending all of…
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Beyond The Azure Blue
From the first day I arrived at Microsoft, my academic colleagues have been asking me about Microsoft’s strategy for cloud computing and when (or if) there would be public announcements. At our Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft announced Azure, our cloud computing platform, with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale and manage Internet or…
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ManyCore: Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba
As I write this, I am attending the ETH LASER summer school on concurrency, which is being held on the island of Elba. As I prepare to deliver six lectures on multicore and cloud computing, the geographic irony of grand ambition, hubris and ignominious defeat is not lost on me. We have been struggling for…
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Rikei Banare and Global Competition
On Saturday, May 17, the New York Times ran a front page story (below the fold) on the dearth of Japanese students entering science and engineering fields. Japanese universities call it rikei banare or “flight from science.”
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Salishan, Exascale and Heterogeneous Multicore
This year, Adolfy Hoisie (LANL) asked me to give the after dinner presentation, which is normally the evening of the second day. An after dinner talk is always fraught with danger, as the desired attributes are brevity, humor, brevity and insight. Oh, and did I mention brevity? Such events are especially challenging when the after…