

In Graphics: Supercomputing Superpowers - marklittlewood
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10187248.stm

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Keyframe
I just watched this the other day -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9kobkqAicU> Cray-1 Supercomputer 30th
Anniversary. I would give up my career and turn it around if given a chance to
work in HPC.

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hugh3
What part of HPC would you like to work in? I have some contact with various
HPC facilities but have never envied the people who work there -- they're just
sysadmins who happen to work in larger, noisier server rooms than most.

~~~
mattds
Well, I'm just one of those sysadmins (but the clusters on which I work are
much more smaller than the 'monsters' in the top500). I don't know if someone
could envy me but there are surely other things apart the noise of HVAC
systems (by the way we are using remote console when possible :-)). How about
working with a lot of different computer nodes combining them with a fast
network (Infiniband) and exporting the storage space through the cluster with
a parallel file system? How about optimizing every aspect of the software
installation (OS, compilers, scientific libraries) to give your users the best
resources to run their simulations (biophysicist, electrical engineers, etc.)?
To not to mention follow the aspects regarding the structure of the data
center: cooling systems, UPS, raised floors, etc.? It doesn't sound too bad to
me :-)

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iamcalledrob
These kind of articles are why I really love the BBC.

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megaman821
While the supercomputers themselves are interesting, I really like graphic. I
think it displays the information in a more clear and compelling way compared
to something like a stacked column chart, like
[http://www.highcharts.com/demo/?example=column-
stacked&t...](http://www.highcharts.com/demo/?example=column-
stacked&theme=default), which would just be too busy with a lot of
information.

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pretzel
So where does Google fit in on that scale?

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portlandFan12
Google has a lot of computers, but they are not tightly coupled enough to be
considered super computers.

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scorchin
I'm curious about the applications of these systems. Why is it that finance
would be the third largest (known) group for supercomputer use? What kind of
number crunching would they be doing?

~~~
hugh3
A lot of it is statistical arbitrage.

That is: you look at the historical prices of all commodities over time and
try to figure out which ones tend to vary together (eg copper-mining companies
go up when copper prices go up... but you're looking for less obvious examples
than that). Then you look at whether current prices diverge from these trends
at all, and if they do you buy/sell accordingly. At least, that's the
handwavey version I know -- I'm sure whatever they're doing at Rennaisance and
DE Shaw is something I don't even know about.

~~~
jayruy
Not a lot of it is statistical arbitrage - yes this is what Rennaisance and
D.E. Shaw do, but this is not what banks (sans perhaps Goldman Sachs) devote
much of their compute power to. It's just too hard to make money doing this
compared to more traditional activities like market making.

As stated, risk management is a big application: VaR and market stress
scenarios are computationally intensive, particularly for portfolios with
path-dependent derivatives. Pricing is the other big application: it is
similarly computationally intensive to value derivatives against the market-
implied term structure of volatility.

