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 64: AWS Profitability – Ready for the Cloud Apocalypse?

    By admin | October 12, 2014 |

    In this episode, the Radio Free HPC team discuss the possibility of a future where the Big 3 (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) figure out that Cloud is not profitable and pull the plug. If that Cloud Apocalypse sounds far fetched, check out these recent news nuggets:

    • An article in The Register that describes how Amazon lost money despite $20 Billion in revenue.
    • Business Week says that Amazon’s cloud unit, AWS, is one of the fastest-growing software businesses of all time, as Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Ashlee Vance recently wrote. It’s also in a hotly contested market. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft (MSFT) have been slashing prices to lure customers from one another.
    • The Wall Street Journal says that “The developments point to the possibility that profit margins in Amazon’s cloud unit—believed to be much higher than its online retailing business—face a long-term squeeze that add to investor concerns about the company’s profitability.”

    If you’re more into numbers, the team has put together a spreadsheet of AWS revenue that does not paint a rosy picture.
    In fact, Henry has got thatAmerican Pie song by Don McLean in his head. What would the new lyrics be? I’m thinking they’d go something like this:
    The Day the Cloud Died
    A long, long time ago
    I can still remember how cloud profit used to make me smile
    But I knew if I had my chance
    That I could make shareholders dance
    And maybe they’d be happy for a while
    But second quarter made me shiver
    With forward-looking statements I’d deliver
    Bad news on the doorstep
    Google price-dropped ten percent
    I can’t remember if I cried
    When analyst expectations lied
    But something touched me deep inside
    The day the cloud died
    [Chorus]
    So bye-bye, the Cloud had gone dry
    Drove my margins to the brink and now my board’s asking why
    And them good old boys spit out the Kool-Aid and cried
    Singin’ “This’ll be the day that Cloud died
    This’ll be the day that Cloud died.”
    Download the MP3 * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed

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