Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience


Evolution or revolution, it’s the persistent question. Can we build reliable exascale systems from extrapolations of current technology or will new approaches be required? There is no definitive answer, as almost any approach might be made to work at some level with enough heroic effort. The bigger question is what design would enable the most…

We can continue down our hand-crafted application development path for petascale systems, and it will work; the evidence to date is clear. Given enough investment of time and money, we will be successful, but I am not convinced we are on the most effective path. (Aerodynamics is not mandatory on cars either, but it surely…