Convergence and High Performance Computing

Sunday, July 13, 2008 9:45 AM

It seems for most of my career I've been attracted to technology that, for many, would seem more like science than technology. I've been privileged to work with some of the founding father's of UNIX as they developed the Plan 9 distributed operating system. I've worked with smart people like John Patrick and Mike Nelson to promote the next generation Internet and Internet2. I've promoted high performance servers at what may rightly be called one of the original server makers, Unisys. And I've had the opportunity to be part of the Linux/open source movement through work with OSDL (now The Linux Foundation) and Sourceforge.

It is these complex, advanced technologies that drive the foundation of the services we use today -- things like TiVo, portable GPS systems, cell phones, and the powerful backbone that enables us to watch broadcast TV on our laptops. One emerging area to keep an eye on is high performance computing (quote below from a fine article by reporter Jim Romeo in LinuxWorld):

"Today, many more organizations are able to take advantage of High Performance Computing, due to the ready availability of inexpensive compute clusters powered by Linux running on off-the-shelf x86 hardware, as opposed to the proprietary hardware and software of yesterday’s supercomputers,' says Sam Charrington, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing for Appistry, Inc."


For many, convergence is the collision of telephone, television and Internet. For me, convergence is the collision of open source, server farms and F1-level networking.

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