Topics including (but not limited to)....

  • Rising power needs

  •  

    Advanced cooling

  •  

     

     

     

       Latest & Greatest New Tech

  • How compute is used

  • Efficient computing & explaining stuff

  •   We argue about it all!

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.

  1. They are computationally intense
  2. Time to solution and quality of solution are critical
  3. 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

  • Episode 149: A Rundown of ISC 2017 Student Cluster Competition Results

    By admin | July 6, 2017 |

    In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks back at the recent ISC 2017 conference and summarizes results from Student Cluster Competition.

    Eleven student teams were on the show floor this year, vying against each other for the top honors in the sixth annual ISC Student Cluster Competition. Tsinghua University from China emerged as the Overall Competition Winner, thus marking their third win in the contest. They had the honor of receiving their trophy from Wednesday keynote speaker, Professor Thomas Sterling.
    The second place was captured by the South African team hosted by CHPC, and the third place went to Beihang University, also from China. The Fan Favorite Award went to Universitat Politècnica De Catalunya from Barcelona, who garnered over 2,100 ISC 2017 participant votes to win the title for the second year in a row. The High Linpack award went to competitors from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen in Nuremberg.


    The three-day competition was co-organized with the HPC Advisory Council. If you are interested in applying for the 2018 competition, please contact the organizers at scc@isc-events.com.

    Brent Gorda with his red Motoguzzi and Rich Brueckner with his bike dubbed “The Mighty One.”


    After that, we do our Catch of the Week:

    • Shahin likes our recent insideHPC post on IBM’s TrueNorth AI chip coming to ARL. IBM is collaborating with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) on a first-of-a-kind brain-inspired supercomputing system powered by a 64-chip array of the IBM TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System. The scalable platform IBM is building for AFRL will feature an end-to-end software ecosystem designed to enable deep neural-network learning and information discovery.
    • Dan reminisces on his youth where he bought an entire minivan full of fireworks for the 4th of July.
    • Rich tells the tale of his Lustre Motorcycle Tour through the Alps. The GoPro camera footage from the trip is amazing. He followed that trip up with three days at the PASC17 conference.

    Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

Recent Episodes

  • Episode 346: SC22 Preview

    November 7, 2022

    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

    November 7, 2022

    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!

    August 22, 2022

    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

    March 29, 2022

    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

    March 28, 2022

    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

    March 21, 2022

    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

    March 14, 2022

    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

    February 14, 2022

    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

    February 1, 2022

    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…