SC08..wow !!!

This year again I got an opportunity to go to SC08: the most happening conference in SuperComputing. Came on Saturday to Austin, Texas and was busy with all the assignments, workshops, tutorials, speaker sessions in the morning and the excellent parties in the evening hosted by different companies. As a student volunteer, I got to attend some really interesting sessions (nVIDIA's GPU tutorial, Patterson's invited talk, etc.) Whoever thinks that iPhone cannot find a market should come to SC, majority of the people had iPhones (students, professors, professionals, etc).

India has 8 supercomputers in the TOP500 list:

In November 2008, 8 systems appeared in the TOP500 list.

Rank	System	Procs	Memory(GB)	Rmax (GFlops)	Rpeak (GFlops)	Vendor
13	EKA Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c, Xeon 53xx 3GHz, Infiniband	14384	N/A	132800	172608	HP
69	PARAMcluster, Xeon 73xx 2.93 Ghz, Infiniband	4608	N/A	37804	54005.8	HP
214	eServer Blue Gene Solution	8192	N/A	18665	22937.6	IBM
335	BL460c, Xeon 54xx 3 GHz, Infiniband	1728	N/A	15966.7	20736	HP
429	BL460c, Xeon E54xx 2.83 GHz, GigEthernet	2208	N/A	14002.3	24994.6	HP
437	Cluster Platform 3000 DL160, Xeon 54xx 3.0 GHz, GigE	2048	N/A	13917	24576	HP
479	BL460c, Xeon 54xx 3.0GHz, GigEthernet	1920	N/A	13159.1	23040	HP
482	BladeCenter HS21 Cluster, Xeon quad core 2.66 GHz, GigEthernet	2400	N/A	13080.1	25603.2	IBM

Virginia Tech's System X is out of the TOP500, but we have a new Apple cluster System G (System Green) ranked 280. System X was ranked 4 in 2005 and was the only man-made self-assembled MacOS cluster in the rankings then.

280

Center for High-End Computer Systems, Virginia Tech United States

SystemG - Apple Mac Pro Cluster, E54xx 2.8 Ghz, Infiniband / 2008 Self-made

2048

16.87

22.94

Today's the last day of the conference, I haven't won anything in the raffles. But it's been an interesting conference meeting with lots and lots of people, making friends, all a part of networking. And tomorrow I get back to work, which is very interesting as well (Ahem .....)

Elections in USA

It's Election day today in USA. Finally everyone HOPES to see a change in the Government. More importantly, it's so refreshing to see huge turnouts for the election. I wish this happens in India during the next elections. Here's an interesting story !!!
May the Best Leader win !!!

Best profession in Kerala

I called up my parents during the weekend, which is a customary three-way conference call that includes sis in Kuwait, parents in India and me in US of A. My parents are in Kerala at my grandma's place. My mom's school is closed for Diwali vacations as is the norm with all schools in India. After the customary enquiries between everyone and my mom's extended summary about trips to various temples in Kerala. Vini (my sis) then asked mom to convert the summaries into full-fledged short stories. I am not complaining about mom's storytelling capabilities, but all the stories weave around some flash strike in Kerala for some ungodly demand accompanied with unexpected rains or floods. It's as if 'God's own Country' is always at God's receiving end. LOL !!!
But that's not what shocked me. Apparently my parents decided to visit the local astrologer and show our horoscopes. Now 'astrologers' are the true parasites in Kerala. Their profession is always in boom. When people are happy, they visit the astrologer to know what their future looks like. During sad times, people visit the astrologer to know what they must do to avoid more obstacles. No matter whether it's an economic boom or an economic slump, astrologers make a lot of money. Again it's the fault of the people who believe in them and foster their trade. My sis is married and living happily with her family. I don't understand what more can an astrologer foresee for her and what more should be known. It's best if some things are left unknown. How can your life be fun, when you know what to expect from it? It seems that the astrologer predicted that I would be studying more. That was a very stupid prediction. I am sure I would have wrung his neck, because here I am trying to finish my PhD and graduate asap. I wish the astrologer foresaw that I am happy with MG and contented to be surrounded with my friends. I wish he could put sense into my parents by using reverse psychology and tell them to accept MG as their ideal DIL. But then that would make the astrologer lose his bread and butter. Instead he told some crap about the doom/destruction that would befall if I married someone whose horoscope did not match. If I only knew who made horoscopes in the first place ..grrrrrrrrrr !!!

In any case, that's the sorry state of affairs in Kerala. I don't think my PhD in these economic times makes sense. Probably I should go to Kerala and join as an apprentice under some famous astrologer and learn the trade. The first thing I would predict then would be about the finicky stock markets !!!