The High Performance Computing PodcastTopics 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
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SA Students Get Ready to take ISC by Storm
Probably 15% more scintillating than usual, Dan promises as he calls this episode “fantastic”!
Now a 5-day conference with two days of workshops as book-ends, multiple tracks and many speakers, and yes, a very exciting Student Cluster Competition, the CHPC National Conference has developed into a very important event in the HPC/AI world. Dan takes us through what he saw, who won, and what we can expect at the competition at ISC in 2020, and just how impressive the whole thing was. You’ve got to hear it.
Why Nobody Should Ever Be Online. Ever
The Big Easy Battles Big Bad Breach: in a segment that wants to be shortened to “Ever.Ever.”, Henry focused not just on yet another cybersecurity incident (the ransomware attack on New Orleans), but on the fact that they city, to its immense credit, actually had a plan! Once the problem was detected, plan kicked into action, systems were shut done, damages narrowed if not avoided, and generally good progress on preparedness was on display. Nice job!
Things You Think You Know, But Might Not
Anyone remember tape drives? Some of you do. Some of you work with them now. Well, Jessi asks about tape storage. Is it still necessary? This is very much in Henry’s wheelhouse so he covers it. Shahin seems unconvinced, really, but Henry is way closer to actual use cases, so he reluctantly waves it through!
Catch of the Week
Shahin: Covers the RISC-V Summit that was just held in San Jose. With 2,000 attendees, 435 member companies, lots of great talks, and expecting to grow by another 50% next year, and for something that started only in 2010, it’s quite a flywheel that’s forming. Also, remember that we had the pleasure of having the RISC-V Foundation CEO, Calista Redmond as a special guest of the podcast, so make sure you listen to that episode.
Shahin also notes that the media coverage of the chip space is starting to show that competition is brewing. Comments from vendors about other projects are sounding sharper and sharper!
He also says RISC “started” at Berkeley and Stanford. “What he meant to say” was modern RISC got its big boost there. He says he’s fully aware of the history of RISC going all the way back to Turing, Cray, Flynn, IBM 801 (and we cut him off, convinced already!)
Dan: Speaking of sharper competition and what people meant to say: in an interview with CNet, Apple’s top brass made a comment about Chromebook vs Apple gear that’s also in the category of “what he meant to say was…”. Henry skillfully segues into how more and more services are cloud based, and Jessi highlights the importance of the bring-you-own-device (BYOD) trend in schools.
Jessi: Goes over the US Government Accountability Office report on on airline IT outages. Just what you need for the holiday travel season. “One IT malfunction per month” is one stat you can remember.
Henry: The great $50m African IP address heist. IPv4 addresses are in demand and an enterprising person in Africa has parlayed that into a $50m windfall for his crafty self. Upshot is? You should all consider gifting IPv4 addresses for the holidays!
Listen in to hear the full conversation
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Recent Episodes
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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.…
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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…