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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SC19 Student Cluster Round Up
The show starts in the usual way, with Henry complaining about snow and us laughing at him. Our special guest, student clusterer extraordinaire Jessi Lanum, complains about recording again with Henry in a definite shot across his bow, to everyone’s amusement.
The group discusses their annual SC19 dinner and the new Henry/Dan bet about the future of RISC-V – check out our last show for the specifics.
We talk about our experiences at SC19, including Henry having to give 19 different presentations in a two-day span, which was a very solid performance. Shahin touches on his annual Dead Architecture Society meeting and the great attendance. We also discuss how many active listeners of Radio Free HPC came up to us – and none of them were armed or threatening at all!
The meat of the show is our discussion of the SC19 Student Cluster Competition. We talk about the student configurations, kicked around the pros and cons of the “small is beautiful” movement in the student cluster competition world. "Does the trend towards fewer-bigger nodes mean a re-emergence and eventual re-victory of SMP over MPP?" wonders Shahin! No records in HPL or HPCG, but some good scores regardless. (It's not proven that the high altitude in Denver was not a factor!)
You’ll have to listen to the show or read Dan’s articles in HPCwire or on www.studentclustercomp.com to get the details – it’s probably a good idea to do both just to make sure you’re fully up to speed.
Why No One Should Ever be Online. Ever.
Henry talks with real anger and sadness about a horrific story of a chain of nursing homes that was attacked by ransomware. These nursing homes now don’t know what medication should go to which patient along with a lot of other problems. Everyone agrees that these malicious criminal idiots are getting worse and that something needs to be done about it pronto.
New Feature Alert!
Things That People Think They Know, But Maybe Don’t
Jessi Lanum’s “Things that people think they know, but maybe don’t” is a new feature on the big broadcast. In this inaugural edition, Jessi asks “What is Exascale and why is it important?” The guys all respond and cover her question like ants on a dead possum.
Catch of the Week
Henry: Notes that the new Star Wars script was almost sold on Ebay after being filched from a careless actor. Sheesh, is nothing private anymore?
Jessi: Found a company that is using HPC, AI and WRF to help fight forest fires, which is great, given the wildfire season we’ve seen this year. Shahin also highlights the work at UC San Diego.
Shahin: The newest Crypto500 ranking is out! Bitcoin has taken over the crypto currency world by latest count, see the white paper here, the slides here, and the Medium article here.
Dan: Dan’s Catch of the Week is dedicated to you, our faithful set of 16 listeners. He lets you know we’d love it if you reach out to us via Twitter or email to let us know what you like, what you don’t like and what we should cover in the future.
Along those lines, right now, before listening to the episode, open up a new tab on your browser and follow us on Twitter. We’re @RadioFreeHPC and as you know, our email address really should be ears@radiofreehpc.com, because we're all ears you see, but for now it is podcast@radio... We'd love to hear from you. Oh, and you can now find us on Spotify and Google Play in addition to iTunes! See below for all the links.
Listen in to hear the full conversation
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…