Recently the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC09) took place in Hamburg where Intel was a platinum sponsor.  A couple of musings:

For Intel, it was great news - we previewed a new high end server processor code-names 'Nehalem-EX'.  In production later in the year, it will have up to 8 cores and 2 threads per core (hyper-threading), 24MB of shared cache, Integrated memory controllers to name a few of the features.  The platform will double the memory capacity - 16 DIMM's per socket,  64 DIMM's per platform (4 socket) and include advanced virtualisation features - sounds like a great platform for running VM's. 

But wait, there's more - we also announced an 8 socket platform.  A quick calculation means: 8 cores, 8 sockets, 2 threads per core = 128 threads.  To see what this looks like under Windows Task Manager click: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4shSQJTd0&feature=player_embedded

This is a high-end server so naturally it has some advanced RAS features.  It's the first Xeon® based platform to have Machine Check Architecture Recovery.  In layman's terms, it means we can detect CPU, memory and I/O errors and then work with the O/S to correct them.  The result is the system recovers from otherwise fatal errors i.e. increased uptime.  Those familiar with Itanium will recognise this technology and coupled with the increase in performance will help IT managers reduce costs if they move away from proprietary expensive RISC based systems.  For those who want to know more about this, checkout the Intel Channel  here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztPTYDllwiY&feature=channel_page

Secondly, the latest edition of the Top 500 list was published.  Amazingly, there are 399 based Intel systems in the Top 500 - that's almost 80%. We've come along way since the Pentium® Pro!.  For those not entirely familiar with the Top 500 list - it's essentially the most powerful 500 computers on the planet.  Naturally, high performance clusters/computers need more than just a powerful CPU - there's interconnects, I/O, memory latency, code optimisations and more to consider.  Probably another topic in its own right.

For those of you who are wondering what the latest top500 list looks like, you can find the latest list here : http://www.top500.org/lists/2009/06 (click on complete list at bottom of page).

Ok, so what does this have to do with an Olympic medal table I hear you cry? Well take a look - not a single entry from the UK in the Top 10 unlike our athletes who managed 4th overall in the 2008 Olympics.  In fact, India, Saudi Arabia, China, Canada, France, Japan and Switzerland all have higher ranking machines/clusters.  By the time the Olympics come to London, I'm hoping that the UK will have an entry in the Top 10.  Certainly our athletes at the Beijing Olympics showed we can be competitive on the world stage…it's now down to us engineers.

~Iain