Advanced Clustering Offers NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs in Select HPC Clusters

Advanced Clustering Technologies is helping customers solve challenges by integrating NVIDIA® Tesla® P100 accelerators into its line of high performance computing clusters. Advanced Clustering Technologies builds custom, turn-key HPC clusters that are used for a wide range of workloads including analytics, deep learning, life sciences, engineering simulation and modeling, climate and weather study, energy exploration, […]

Use our Customer Portal to Check Order Status

Remember that you may use the Advanced Clustering Customer Portal at portal.advancedclustering.com anytime, anywhere to review your shipped orders, purchase history and more. If you do not already have a password, you can create one on the site. Once you’ve created your password, you’ll have the ability to: View your shipped orders Review your purchase […]

GPU Computing Powered by the NVIDIA Tesla P100

Advanced Clustering’s GPU computing solutions include NVIDIA’s new Tesla P100 GPU PCIe accelerator cards, which are designed to help solve the world’s most important challenges that have infinite compute needs in HPC and deep learning. Based on NVIDIA’s latest Pascal GPU architecture, the Tesla P100 provides the throughput of more than 32 commodity CPU-based nodes […]

Grants for HPC Funding in 2017

Get the help you need to be competitive with your HPC grant proposal this year. At Advanced Clustering, we have been providing winning technical quotes for grant applicants for more than 15 years. We can help you secure the funding you need for your high performance computing projects this year. We know that a significant […]

MRI grant-funded HPC Cluster Ready for Major Research University

Infiniband is a Rarity Among Cloud HPC Providers

A new report from The Next Platform indicates that Infiniband is hard to find in HPC clouds. Infiniband has been the interconnect of choice among every Top 500 list since 2009, with more than 37% of systems in the most recent Top 500 list using Infiniband. Cloud HPC solutions, have been slow to adopt Infiniband. […]

Attention HPC Users: the NSF Wants to Hear From You

The National Science Foundation has just issued a Dear Colleague Letter seeking a “Request for Information on Future Needs for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure to Support Science and Engineering Research.” As stated in the solicitation, “In this Request for Information (RFI), NSF encourages community input to inform the Foundation’s strategy and plans for an advanced cyberinfrastructure that […]

NSF Solicitation for BIGDATA is Out for 2017

The National Science Foundation’s solicitation for BIGDATA grants is out for 2017. The due dates are March 15-22, 2017. The BIGDATA program seeks novel approaches in computer science, statistics, computational science, and mathematics, along with innovative applications in domain science, including social and behavioral sciences, education, biology, the physical sciences, and engineering that lead towards the […]

IDC Report: The Top Pain Points of HPC Customers

Software is the No. 1 pain point for high performance computing (HPC) customers, according to the IDC’s latest HPC update issued at SC16 in Salt Lake City. IDC reports that software is challenging for several reasons: better management software is needed, parallel software is lacking for most users and many applications will need a major […]

Deck the Halls with a Geek Wreath

Our team here at Advanced Clustering Technologies is spreading holiday cheer this year. Two words – Geek Wreath. It’s simple: Take any spare computer parts that you have lying around and transform them into a holiday wreath for your home or office. Cables makes for a start to your Geek Wreath. Form the circular base […]

800-Core Cluster Ready for Scientific Research

Be Our Guest for Dinner Nov. 15 at SC16

If you are attending SC16 next week in Salt Lake City, we hope you will join us for the dinner we are hosting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 15 at Squatters Pub Brewery, 147 West Broadway (300 South). Let us treat you to a tour of the brewery followed by a beer tasting as […]

How Strong is Your Grant Proposal for HPC Funding?

The next deadline for proposals to the National Science Foundation’s Major Research Instrumentation Program is Jan. 11, 2017. Are you ready? Advanced Clustering Technologies can help. We have published a white paper that outlines best practices for writing a successful grant proposal for HPC funding. The paper is based on the experiences of our customers […]

Deadline for NSF DIBBs Program is Jan. 3

The National Science Foundation’s vision for a Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21) considers an integrated, scalable, and sustainable cyberinfrastructure to be crucial for innovation in science and engineering (see www.nsf.gov/cif21). The Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs) program is an integral part of CIF21. The DIBBs program (Solicitation 17-500) encourages development of […]

NVIDIA Launches CUDA 8 Toolkit for GPU Developers

NVIDIA today announced that the CUDA 8 toolkit is being made available for use by GPU developers. The NVIDIA® CUDA® Toolkit provides a comprehensive development environment for C and C++ developers building GPU-accelerated applications. The CUDA Toolkit includes a compiler for NVIDIA GPUs, math libraries, and tools for debugging and optimizing the performance of your […]

Cast Your Vote for the HPCWire Readers’ Choice Awards

The HPCwire Readers’ Choice Awards are determined each year by HPCWire readers across the HPC community. The awards recognize the most outstanding individuals, organizations, products and technologies in the industry. You need to be a registered HPCWire subscriber to cast your votes. Click here to vote. Please consider  voting for Auto Research Center, which has […]

Upgrade Your System with the Latest Intel Xeon Phi

Are you planning to upgrade your cluster now or in the new year? We are now offering the latest Intel® Xeon Phi™, called Knights Landing. KNL is Intel’s first processor to deliver the performance of an accelerator with the benefits of a standard host CPU. The KNL Intel Xeon Phi processor enables machines to rapidly learn without […]

How Strong is Your Cluster Utilization?

Are your HPC cluster’s users staying away because they find it too difficult to submit jobs? We ask because cluster utilization is an important consideration. Cluster utilization is one of the main key performance indicators (KPIs) of any datacenter. Cluster utilization is important for your capacity planning, and it also informs your decisions about future […]

NVIDIA GPUs Offer Unlimited Data Center Acceleration

Scientists can now crunch through petabytes of data up to 10x faster than with CPUs in applications ranging from energy exploration to deep learning. Plus, Tesla accelerators deliver the horsepower needed to run bigger simulations faster than ever before. For enterprises deploying VDI, Tesla accelerators are perfect for accelerating virtual desktops to any user, anywhere. […]

Coming next month: Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium

Advanced Clustering will be attending the Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium Sept. 20 – 21 at the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, OK. We’re proud to once again be a Bronze Sponsor of this event, now in its 14th year. It’s a great opportunity to network among the area’s very active high performance computing community. We hope […]

White House Releases Strategic Plan for NSCI Initiative

It’s been a year since President Obama issued an Executive Order to create the National Strategic Computing Initiative or NSCI. NSCI was created to ensure the United States continues leading in the computing field over the coming decades. This week the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released the Strategic Plan for NSCI. […]

NSF Cyberinfrastructure Grant Proposals Due Aug. 23

For those applying for an NSF grant in the next round, your full proposal for the Campus Cyberinfrastructure grant is due to the National Science Foundation on Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2016. If you still need product quotes from an HPC vendor, we at Advanced Clustering Technologies are available to help. You can request a quote today. Our quote […]

HPC Compute Blocks: Built to Order for Intensive Workloads

HPC Compute Blocks from Advanced Clustering Technologies are built to support parallelized workflows with easy serviceability and high availability. You get high performance and density in the smallest form-factor board optimized for memory performance. HPC Compute Blocks are built with the future in mind. Our full-featured board offers maximum product flexibility for expansion, giving you […]

Download our Guide to Knights Landing

The new Knights Landing or KNL Intel® Xeon Phi™ series is here, and Advanced Clustering has all of the details. This series promises to drive breakthroughs through high performance modeling and simulation, visualization and data analytics. Download our Knights Landing Overview (PDF) to learn about Knights Landing and to consult with us about how it fits into your HPC plans […]

ACTnowHPC website highlights cloud features and benefits

Advanced Clustering has re-launched ACTnowHPC.com to offer more detailed information about the high performance computing cloud cluster, the industries it serves and the ways it helps users access the latest technology. The new site includes case studies from satisfied HPC cloud customers and details about the on-boarding and job running processes. Advanced Clustering’s HPC cloud provides users with […]

NVIDIA debuts new Tesla P100 GPU

NVIDIA’s Tesla P100 GPU PCIe accelerator cards are designed to help solve the world’s most important challenges that have infinite compute needs in HPC and deep learning. Based on NVIDIA’s latest Pascal GPU architecture, the NVIDIA Tesla P100 provides the throughput of more than 32 commodity CPU-based nodes and delivers up to 70 percent lower […]

Meet Knights Landing – the new Intel Xeon Phi series

Intel officially launched Knights Landing, the latest, greatest version of the Intel® Xeon Phi™ series, during the ISC 2016 conference in Frankfurt. You’re probably known about it, read about it and considered ordering it. Now it’s here. What’s noteworthy? First, there are a couple of firsts involved with this product launch. Knights Landing or KNL represents Intel’s […]

Intel Explains “What Knights Landing Is Not”

Later this week Intel will unveil the newest member of the Intel Xeon Phi family, code named Knights Landing. In advance of the release, Intel’s James Reinders has written a primer that explains “What Knights Landing is Not.” Reinders writes: “I have found that everything is clear, when we really understand that Knights Landing is […]

Mellanox Launches ConnectX-5 Adapter

Mellanox this week announced ConnectX-5, the next-generation of its 100G InfiniBand and Ethernet adapter line. The new device will help organizations take advantage of real-time data processing for high performance computing, data analytics, machine learning, national security and ‘Internet of Things’ applications. Designed to connect with any computing infrastructure – x86, Power, GPU, ARM, and […]

NSF Announces New Round of Campus Cyberinfrastructure Funding

The National Science Foundation has announced a new round of funding for high performance computing projects. Full proposals for the Campus Cyberinfrastructure program will be due by 5 p.m. submitter’s local time on Tues., Aug. 23, 2016. The Campus Cyberinfrastructure program is a continuation of the NSF’s campus-level programs, which through the years has supported campus […]

Installing a Cluster at Indiana State University

Download Our Updated HPC Pricing Guide

Our HPC Pricing Guide has been updated to provide you with the very latest pricing information so that you can see what kind of system you could get for budget ranges of $25,000 up to $250,000. All quotes in the pricing guide feature the new Intel Xeon E5-2600v4 “Broadwell” CPUs and include 24TB of Usable […]

Meet our new HPC Compute Blocks

Advanced Clustering’s new HPC Compute Blocks offer the strong performance you need and pairs it with more manageable hardware and more storage options. Nodes, drives and power supplies are all hot swappable and tool-less. HPC Compute Blocks feature better quality power supply and components provide lower power consumption as well as scriptable BIOS updates and […]

Video: Cowboy Cluster helps HPC Center serve OSU researchers

The Oklahoma State University High Performance Computing Center released a video this week to share the success of its supercomputer, Cowboy, and the supercomputing services the university provides to faculty, students and staff to aid research. Watch the video here. Advanced Clustering Technologies worked with Dr. Dana Brunson, the university’s Assistant Vice President for Research […]

Download our Guide to Broadwell Features and Benefits

Advanced Clustering’s Pinnacle servers and MicroHPC workstations have integrated the next generation of Xeon processors from Intel — the “Broadwell” E5-2600 v4. These Broadwell chips are a significant step forward in terms of performance for HPC. Learn more about this new architecture with our guide to Broadwell features and benefits, which includes: a side-by-side comparison […]

New Report Offers Guidance to NSF on HPC Priorities

The National Academies for Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued a report today that offers guidance to the National Science Foundation on national high performance computing policy. Commissioned by the NSF, the report covers priorities within cyberinfrastructure, software modernization, and blended simulation-big data computation capability. “We are very pleased with the National Academy’s report and are […]

Cloud HPC Market Expected to More Than Double by 2020

tagged: ACTnowHPC, HPC cloud computing The cloud HPC market size is estimated to grow from $4.37 billion in 2015 to $10.83 billion by 2020, at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 19.9%. That’s according to a new market research report published by MarketsandMarkets. The main factors driving the growth of cloud HPC are: – […]

Cloud customers share success stories using ACTnowHPC

Advanced Clustering Technologies has just released a compendium of case studies that demonstrate how four customers are using the company’s on-demand HPC cluster in the cloud, ACTnowHPC, to achieve such benefits as quick turn-around times, technical support, access to RAM and no waiting for access. The use cases include: – A weather forecaster triples his […]

Installing a new cluster at The Ohio State University

Broadwell is here: Ask us about Intel Xeon E5-2600v4

We at Advanced Clustering are pleased to offer the next generation of Xeon processors from Intel — the “Broadwell” E5-2600 v4 — in our Pinnacle servers and MicroHPC workstations. These Broadwell chips are a significant step forward in terms of performance for HPC. With increased core counts as well as the introduction of 2400MHz DDR4 […]

Case Study: HPC Cluster Speeds Molecular Dynamics Research

In our latest case study, researchers at the University of Richmond shares details of their use of an HPC cluster built by Advanced Clustering Technologies to expand our understanding the dynamical behavior of interesting molecular systems. A research group at the university, led by Chemistry Professor Dr. Carol Parish, needed a high performance cluster to […]

Backing Up Your HPC Cluster

Advanced Clustering Technologies offers tech tips written by our engineers for the benefit of the HPC community. This week, we’d like to share our tips for backing up your cluster in honor or World Backup Day on March 31. Sometimes overlooked, making backups of your data is important for any cluster owner. Click here to […]

Talking HPC at the American Chemical Society Meeting

Advanced Clustering Now Offers STAR-CCM+® In the Cloud

Advanced Clustering Technologies has partnered with CD-adapco to offer the company’s industry-leading engineering simulation software solution, STAR-CCM+®, to customers using Advanced Clustering’s on demand HPC cluster in the cloud, ACTnowHPC. “We’re pleased to announce that our HPC cloud now makes STAR-CCM+® immediately accessible to engineers who purchase the license from CD-adapco,” said Kyle Sheumaker, President […]

Case Study: Cloud Speeds Up Research for Biotech Company

In our latest case study, a researcher at Bioo Scientific shares the story of her success in using the ACTnowHPC on-demand HPC cluster in the cloud to conduct research. Bioo Scientific was running on a workstation before joining ACTnowHPC. This is adequate when working on only one gene for one panel. However, the challenge researchers […]

15 Things You Must Consider When Buying an HPC Cluster

Advanced Clustering Technologies is celebrating 15 years in business as a leading provider of turn-key HPC solutions including high performance computing clusters, servers, workstations and on demand HPC cloud computing as a service. To commemorate the occasion, the company is sharing 15 things you should know when buying an HPC cluster. 1. Turn-key is key. […]

Case Study: Weather Forecasting in the Cloud

In our latest case study, a weather forecasting researcher at Weather It Is, LTD, shares his experiences using Advanced Clustering Technology’s ACTnowHPC on-demand cloud high performance computing cluster to forecast potentially severe winter snowstorms. Before Weather It Is started using ACTnowHPC, the company faced a lack of availability on its own HPC cluster, where the […]

ACTnowHPC Cloud Cluster Joins UberCloud Market

We’re pleased to announce that our ACTnowHPC on demand cloud cluster this week joined the UberCloud online marketplace, where engineers, scientists and their service providers discover, try, and buy computing power and software in the cloud as a service. ACTnowHPC enables users to harness the power of high performance computing resources on a pay-as-you-go basis without […]

Five Tips for Writing a Winning Grant Proposal

The deadline for Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant proposals to the National Science Foundation was last week. If you submitted a proposal, we wish you luck. If you didn’t, there’s always next time. Either way, we wanted to share some helpful hints gathered from customers who have won grant funding in the past. Check out […]

HPC Predictions for 2016: Charting the Future

During Supercomputing last month in Austin, the IDC shared happy news of a growing HPC market in 2016. “IDC forecasts that the global HPDA ecosystem market will continue growing robustly to reach about $4.9 billion in 2019,” said Steve Conway, IDC research vice president for HPC and HPDA. “Data-intensive simulation will expand rapidly, driven by […]

U.S. Universities Face Ongoing Decline in R&D Funding

U.S. universities face an ongoing decline in federal research and development funding, according to new data from the National Science Foundation. For the third consecutive year, federal research and development funding for higher education lagged behind inflation. Federally funded R&D at universities declined 3.9% to $37.9 billion in FY 2014. It has fallen by more […]

Introducing ACTnowHPC, Our On-Demand HPC Cloud Service

Advanced Clustering is proud to announce that we are expanding our high performance computing offerings to include an on-demand HPC cloud service. The service, called ACTnowHPC, gives users easy access to the latest HPC technologies including CPUs, accelerators and interconnects without the upfront capital outlay for HPC hardware. “Our enhanced HPC cloud service answers a […]

Download our White Paper on NSF Grant Proposal Writing

The National Science Foundation’s Major Research Instrumentation grant program is designed for universities and researchers who want to secure funding for the high performance computing solutions that drive research and discovery. A great number of our customers seek NSF MRI grant funds as the demand for HPC continues to grow. In fiscal year 2014, the […]

Join Us for Customer Appreciation Night at Supercomputing15

Advanced Clustering invites you to join us for a Customer Appreciation Night Dinner/Cruise during Supercomputing 2015 on Tuesday, Nov. 17, in downtown Austin. This is our way of saying thank you for being a loyal customer. Boarding starts at 6:45 p.m. for a free three-hour cruise that concludes at 10 p.m. Enjoy Texas-style barbecue and […]

Let’s Meet Up at Oklahoma Supercomputing and Talk HPC

If you are looking for a free way to connect with others in the Midwest who are interested in high performance computing, make your plans today to attend the Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium Sept. 22-23 at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. You can register today. We’re proud to announce that Advanced Clustering Technologies is attending […]

Configure Your System, Get Pricing Estimate with Configurator

Advanced Clustering welcomes you to the online HPC Configurator, an online tool that enables you to configure your HPC system, server, storage or workstation in order to get an initial price estimate. Available from any product page on AdvancedClustering.com, the online HPC Configurator allows you to make configuration selections including processors, memory, power supply, hot swap […]

The Cost of HPC: How Does Budget Affect Value?

Whether or not you have a budget in mind or funding in hand, you’ve no doubt wondered what you get for your money when purchasing an HPC cluster. If you had more money, would the value be equally enhanced? If you spent less, would the value still be there? These are all valid questions. To […]

Report Shows HPC Spending ‘Solid and Stable’

HPCWire reported this week that 2014 was a strong year for HPC sales across the major categories with 59% of all sites anticipating further growth during the next two years. The finding comes from the seventh Site Budget Allocation Map from Intersect360 Research, which examines trends across academic, government and industry sites. The report finds […]

HPC Cluster Blog – RHEL 7 Released

On June 10th of 2014, Red Hat launched version 7 of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system. RHEL 7 was a long time coming and adds a bunch of great features and fixes from previous versions. There are lots of improvements but we will be just going over a few key ones in […]

Oberlin College’s New Cluster Expands Research Capabilities

When it was time to replace its first high performance computing system with a new supercomputer, Associate Professor of Biology Michael Moore and his team knew they wanted a system that would bring HPC resources to the greatest number of students. “It’s vital to their future success that Oberlin students have access to high performance […]

UC Merced Selects Advanced Clustering to Build Supercomputer

University of California Merced has selected Advanced Clustering Technologies to build a cluster supercomputer that will support research at the institution. The new UC-Merced supercomputer will help researchers at the university quickly and flexibly conduct their research projects while expanding the ability to answer the questions being asked, said Hrant Hratchian, Assistant Professor of Chemistry […]

University of Central Oklahoma Selects Us to Build ‘Buddy’ Supercomputer

The University of Central Oklahoma’s Center for Research and Education in Interdisciplinary Computation (CREIC) has selected Advanced Clustering Technologies to build a cluster supercomputer to be named “Buddy” in honor of the university’s mascot, Buddy Broncho. The supercomputer project is being funded by a $304,745 research grant CREIC was awarded last year by the National […]

Growing Number of Life Scientists Will Need HPC This Year

Life science researchers who previously were able to manage their compute-intensive work with traditional workstations and simple clusters are finding that they will need more powerful HPC systems in 2015. According to a new report from HPCWire.com, Ari Berman, GM of Government Services, the BioTeam consulting firm, said: “Roughly 25 percent of life scientists, and […]

Three New eQUEUE Features to Improve Your Cluster

Advanced Clustering’s web-based job submission tool, eQUEUE, is getting a few upgrades this month. eQUEUE will now support: SLURM scheduler CentOS/RedHat 7 installations Desktop resizing for visualization windows Watch our video for details about the upgraded features. These updates will roll out soon. We’ll keep you posted.

NSFDays: A Chance to Learn Best Practices for Proposal Writing

The National Science Foundation is offering NSF Days at university campuses nationwide to help early career researchers by teaching best practices and tips for writing strong proposals in order to secure funding for valuable research. Learning to write a powerful proposal is key to successfully obtaining NSF funding, and these NSF Days are designed to […]

Introducing our Whisper-Quiet, Liquid-Cooled Workstations

We’re offering the best combination of price, performance, and Linux compatibility with our new line of MicroHPC Workstations. Our workstations provide you with a cost-effective HPC alternative that gives you the performance and flexibility you need in a high performance computing solution. MicroHPC whisper quiet workstations are great development environments that allow you to test […]

Two Days of Intel® Xeon Phi™ Programming Training at KU

Registration is now open for two days of FREE, in-depth Intel® Xeon Phi™ parallel programming training. The training sessions will take place April 13-14 at the University of Kansas. For more information, visit http://goo.gl/uKrl4D If you plan on attending both sessions, you must register separately for each session. To attend the 2nd day, the first day is required. The first […]

We Hope to See You at ACS Denver Next Month

We’ve got three weeks until the American Chemical Society meeting takes place in Denver. Thousands of chemistry professionals will be there March 22-26 to attend the 249th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society. High Performance Computing makes it possible to speed up your important chemistry research projects – and we’d like to talk […]

Sharing New Resources for Intel® Xeon Phi™ Users

For those of you who are using the Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor, we’ve just received some new online resources from Intel that might prove useful to you. The recently updated Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor Applications and Solutions Catalog includes downloads and materials regarding the latest applications that are optimized for Phi. For your convenience, the […]

HPC: Fueling the Future of Physics Research

High performance computing is changing the way physics research, including high energy physics research, is conducted. The power and speed of processors, coupled with the amount and speed of available memory, have greatly improved the way physicists do physics modeling and simulations. We’ll be attending the American Physical Society annual meeting next week in San […]

HPC Cluster Delivers Flexibility for University’s Future Needs

This week we delivered and installed the new HPC cluster we built for Washington University in St. Louis. The cluster will help the university support its growing HPC user base, which includes researchers from disciplines not usually associated with HPC such as economists and radiologists. The university also wanted a fast storage system of 100 […]

SC14 HPC News Roundup

A number of key announcements were made at SC14 with implications for the future of the HPC marketplace. Here’s a roundup of key announcements and big news to come out of SC14 last week in New Orleans: + Intel Shares Details about Future Plans for Xeon Phi Intel gave SC14 attendees a look at the […]

Newsletter: Pinnacle systems now shipping with E5 v3 processors

Now shipping: Pinnacle servers with Intel’s new E5-2600 v3 “Haswell” CPUs All of our products — including the Pinnacle Flex cluster nodes, servers and workstations — are now available with Intel’s recently released E5-2600 v3 “Haswell” processors. To celebrate the launch of these powerful systems, we’re showing them off on our newly revamped website! Our […]

HPC Cluster Blog – Grant Writing

Getting ready to write a grant proposal? Need an accurate quote with the latest in HPC technology? Well, look no further. At Advanced Clustering Technologies, we understand that a significant source of funding for many of our clients’ cluster purchases comes from one government alphabet agency (NSF) or another (DOE). That means spending a lot […]

HPC Cluster Remote Administration

As a turnkey cluster provider, one of the questions we always ask our clients is who is going to manage their cluster and what kind of experience do they have. While we have some clients that have full-time, in-house staff to administer their clusters, we also have some researchers and scientists who have to balance […]

HPC Cluster Blog – IPMI

Nearly all of the systems shipped from Advanced Clustering in the last couple of years come standard with IPMI. IPMI stands for Intelligent Platform Management Interface, and gives you powerful remote management features for your compute nodes and servers. IPMI runs as part of a small co-processor, also known as the BMC, or baseboard management […]

HPC Cluster Blog – GTX vs Tesla

A comparison of high-end GTX and Tesla GPUs for double-performance computing Many of our customers have discovered that high-end NVIDIA GTX cards, such as the GTX Titan, offer a relatively low-cost alternative to NVIDIA Tesla cards such as the K20 or K40. Like the Teslas, the Titans offer double-precision calculations with comparable TFLOPS and number […]

HPC Cluster Blog – Consulting

Are you thinking of purchasing a new HPC cluster? Maybe you are considering expanding your current environment? Not sure where to start? Contact Advanced Clustering Technologies and discuss your concerns with sales and engineering to determine which direction is best for you. You’ve heard of the Intel Phi co-processor, perhaps you’ve seen others working with […]

HPC Cluster Blog – SSD vs HDD

SSD vs. HDD – or when to choose one over the other. At Advanced Clustering, we hear a lot of opinions for the use of both solid state drives (SSDs) and standard hard disk drives (HDDs), and each has its own pros and cons depending on what their use will be. While there are advantages […]

HPC Cluster Blog – Memory Amount Limits

Memory amount limits: What’s possible for your system? The appropriate amount of memory for a particular node or server is usually best determined by looking at the number of memory channels available on the system’s motherboard. These channels are communication pathways that run between the memory and the memory controller, a component inside the processor […]

HPC Cluster Blog – HPC in the Cloud

Is HPC in the cloud right for you? Over the years, I’ve attended many birds of feather where the topic was whether or not there was a future in moving HPC into the cloud.  There were plenty of vigorous debates for and against, and they tended to go this way: For: The most obvious argument […]

HPC Cluster Blog – New version of eQUEUE available

Advanced Clustering Technologies is pleased to announce version 0.9 of eQUEUE. The RPM has been updated in our yum repository, so a simple “yum update equeue” should get the new version. If you don’t get the updated package, a “yum clean all” will clear any cache you have stored locally. If you have any questions […]

HPC Cluster Blog – Xeon Phi

Xeon Phi, is it right for you? With Intel’s release of the Xeon Phi back in 2012, there has been a lot of interest, and a lot of misunderstanding of what it is and how it works. The Phi can provide a great performance bump for the right application and use case. To understand if […]

HPC Cluster Blog – Cluster Interconnects

Cluster interconnects: the three basic configurations While processor speed, memory amount and number of nodes in your cluster are important, another serious consideration for overall cluster performance is the interconnect. The term “interconnect” refers to the cabling and switches used by the nodes to communicate with each other. While necessary for every cluster, it becomes […]

HPC Cluster Blog – ULLtraDIMMs

ULLTraDIMMs, super fast storage When companies work together, good things can happen. This is demonstrated by the collaboration of SMART storage and Diablo Technologies to develop a new line of ultra-low latency storage, the ULLtraDIMM. The ULLtraDIMM’s design connects flash storage to the memory bus by placing flash as close as possible to the CPU using […]

HPC Cluster Blog – Oversubscribing Your Network?

To oversubscribe your IB network or not: When deploying an high performance computing cluster with more than 36 nodes that has an InfiniBand network, one of the most important considerations (beyond the bandwidth – QDR vs. FDR) is whether to oversubscribe or not. There are valid reasons for both approaches. Our first option is a […]

HPC Cluster Blog – Heat Density the Challenges of Compact Compute Nodes

Heat density: The Challenges of Compact Compute Nodes With the popularity of physically smaller compute nodes like Advanced Clustering’s own Pinnacle Flex system, comes the issue of heat density. While the size of nodes is shrinking, the power draw of these systems is staying about the same, or going up with the addition of accelerators […]

HPC Cluster Blog – Powering Your Cluster

Powering Your Cluster One item our customers often overlook when exploring the idea of a cluster purchase is their power requirements. Yet this is one of the most important elements of a cluster purchase, since it can affect cost, rack space and even the physical environment in which the cluster will be housed. For starters, […]