Posted by Kenneth Farmer, Monday December 12 2005 @ 11:46AM EST
ClusterMonkey: The SC conference is always a lot of fun because there are so many cool new things at the show, you get to see people that you have only emailed, you get to see old friends, and you get to "geek out" without too much grief from your family. This year's show was no exception. It was the largest SC conference ever and had lots of new announcements and even included a large presence from Microsoft. Of course, Cluster Monkey has already commented about this turn of events.
This year's SC was a good show. I didn't get to any of the presentations, but I did try to see as much of the show floor as I could. So I want to share with you what I saw and what I learned in talking with the various vendors. However the show floor was huge so I may have to rely on press releases to get me over the hump.
IDC: Appro Xtreme-X Supercomputer Blade Solution
Analysis of the Xtreme-X architecture and management system while assessing challenges and opportunities in the technical computing market for blade servers. Video - The Road to PetaFlop Computing
Explore the Scalable Unit concept where multiple clusters of various sizes can be rapidly built and deployed into production. This new architectural approach yields many subtle benefits to dramatically lower total cost of ownership.