Topics including (but not limited to)....
Radio Free HPC (RFHPC) started in 2012 and, after a short break of 193 months, has returned to the airwaves (cyber waves?) with co-hosts Dan Olds, Henry Newman, and Shahin Khan.
The podcast covers a wide range of topics but is particularly focused on data center technology and challenges. These include high performance computing, power and cooling, new technology, and, really, whatever the hell they want to talk about.
Quick FAQ
"Why are you just covering HPC? There's this new thing called AI, have you heard of it?"
Yeah, we've heard of it and we do cover it. To us, HPC is a broad term used to refer to a very broad group of apps/workloads that have common characteristics.
- They are computationally intense
- Time to solution and quality of solution are critical
- The output is important enough to justify investment in high-end clusters and associated hardware/software
AI meets all of the criteria above just like bioscience, aerospace, weather prediction, and several other domains. In fact, AI is or will soon be folded into the workflows of nearly every 'traditional' HPC and enterprise application over time. This is going to put a lot of pressure on data centers and we'll be talking about how to deal with it.
"Was the old version of Radio Free HPC popular? I've never heard of it..."
Yes, it rose from obscurity to being mildly popular and, at times, entertaining. At our peak, we had as many as 16 sustained listeners and as many as 19 theoretical max listeners.
"I listened to the old show a couple of times and liked the arguing. Will there be more of that in this reboot?"
Yes, in fact we expect as much as 29% more arguing and a significant increase in the number of personal insults per episode.
"How often will this thing come out and how do I find out about it?"
We used to try to do weekly shows but failed due to other commitments, travel, etc. And there were just weeks when nothing important happened. But to answer your question, could be every couple of weeks, could be once a month, or we could record a marathon 8-10 hour single episode. Depends on what's happening and our mood.
We're getting together our RSS feeds and such but in the short term we'll be publicizing the episodes through the RFHPC X account and our individual social media accounts.
Ok, enough questions. If you want to learn more about the show and hosts, check out the "About" page.
Here are our most recent episodes along with the 345 or so previous editions, enjoy!
Latest Episode
-
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at China’s new ARM-based Exascale supercomputer prototype.
As reported in China Daily, scientists have put an exascale computing prototype into operation that does not run the x86 instruction set. The Sunway exascale computer prototype was developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC), the team that developed Sunway TaihuLight, crowned the world’s fastest computer two years in a row in 2016 and 2017.The Sunway exascale computer prototype is very much like a concept car that can run on road,”said Yang Meihong, director of the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan. “We expect to build the exascale computer in the second half of 2020 or the first half of 2021,” said Yang.
Another prototype exascale supercomputer Tianhe-3 passed the acceptance tests on July 22. Its final version is expected to come out in 2020. The two prototypes marked a further step towards China’s successful development of the next-generation supercomputer.
After that, we do our Catch of the Week:- Rich points us to the story about Rigetti Computing’s pending 128-qubit quantum computer. The company has already built the 128-qubit processing chip, and is working to put all the pieces together to bring more power to researchers and developers. If successful, it could be the world’s most powerful quantum computer and it could have the chance to outpace traditional supercomputers. Meanwhile, you can already access IBMQ, D-Wave, and Chinese quantum machines in the cloud today.
- Henry notes that one of the scary things to come out of the Black Hat conference is a new kind of microwave weapon for cooking your enemy from communication satellites.
- Dan is wardriving in North Carolina in the town the Internet forgot.
Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed
Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter.
Recent Episodes
-
Episode 346: SC22 Preview
We’ve got the whole crew here as we look at the upcoming SC22 event. How many will be there? What will be happening? We answer only some of these questions.…
-
Episode 345: Dow Gets Cloudy
Dan rides alone on this one as he interviews the HPC folks from Dow who are behind their move to cloud bursting. Interesting and informative. *Download the MP3 * Follow…
-
Episode 344: Finally back! And with a new co-host!
We introduce new co-host Ben Carr and talk some NIST and Intel trevails. RadioFreeHPC is distributed in partnership with HPCwire. *Download the MP3 * Follow us on Twitter * Subscribe on Spotify * Subscribe…
-
Episode 343: It’s GTC, Baby
In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, Dan and Jessi talk GTC along with special guest Todd Weiss. RadioFreeHPC is distributed in partnership with HPCwire. *Download the MP3
-
Episode 342: Jazz, Melting Diamonds, and Schrödinger’s Cat
In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, the crew round up the most intriguing batch of recent HPC topics including Graphcore, HPC efforts to better understand melting diamonds and Jazz, as well…
-
Episode 341: Ponte Vecchio
In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, the crew talk Intel’s Ponte Vecchio. RadioFreeHPC is distributed in partnership with HPCwire. *Download the MP3 * Follow us on Twitter * Subscribe on Spotify * Subscribe on…
-
Episode 340: HPC with Trish Damkroger and Brent Gorda
In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, Dan and Jessi are joined by Trish Damkroger and Brent Gorda to talk HPC topics, thoughts, and intriguing trends. RadioFreeHPC is distributed in partnership with HPCwire.…
-
Episode 339: 12 Cores Per Soul
In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, the crew discusses Intel’s investment into RISC-V, the 2022 Winter Classic student cluster competition, and quantum computing in Canada. RadioFreeHPC is distributed in partnership with HPCwire.…
-
Episode 338: NVIDIA Slinks Away, Meta Bulks Up, And We Zap Bugs
In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, the crew talks Meta’s new AI supercomputer, NVIDIA abandoning ARM, and our latest competition winners. RadioFreeHPC is brought to you by the Surfs Up Hippie and…
The High Performance Computing Podcast



