MicroPod HPC: Personal Parallel Computer

© 2013 WARP Mechanics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Josh Judd, CTO

Q1-2013

MicroPod HPC:Your personal parallel computer


Page

Slide 2

Agenda

• What solutions are we trying to provide to the world?

• What is a super computer?

• What is a MicroPod HPC?

• Why would somebody want one at home?

• Why is this a good idea socially?

• Why is WARP Mechanics the right firm to do this?

• What can I do to help?


Page

Slide 3

What problems are we trying to solve for the

world?Problem Statement:

• Most scientific progress today requires using super computers

• There aren’t enough computer professionals skilled in this area

• This limits the number of super computers that can be built

MicroPod HPC Solution:

• Turnkey downloadable images of all parallel computer elements

• Turn commodity hardware into a parallel computer, or run as VMs

• Train the next generation of parallel computer designers and

operators

• Free, and good for the world... But it must be funded to get the

software and documentation built


Page

Slide 4

What is a “super” computer?

• No specific size or speed makes a system "super”

• Networked cluster of systems with software that can spread

complicated calculations across many full-scale computers

Not just a “chip with more cores”

This method will always be 1000s or more times more powerful than any single

computer

Also called “parallel” computers, or “High Performance Computers” (HPC)

• This computer science technique can be applied in different scales

to suit different budgets and computational power requirements

• It is the technique of clustering and distributing load that is the heart

of a true parallel super computer


Page

Slide 5

What is a “MicroPod HPC”?

• Turnkey open source parallel computer software and documentation

with applied super computer techniques

• Makes it easy to get started with parallel computing

• “Crowd funded” via a Kickstarter project

• Construct a parallel processing computer using commodity parts, as

virtual machines, or using cloud services

• Use this for fun projects, to learn parallel programming, or super

computer design and administration

• Everything specific to the MicroPod HPC will be released under

GPL


Page

Slide 6

Why would you want a personal super computer?

Up to your creativity! Some ideas to get started:

• Learn to program, deploy, and administer parallel systems

• Run existing parallel software at a smaller scale – and smaller

budget

• Develop parallel applications for commercial use

• Ray tracing or special effects rendering farm

• Host your own multiplayer online game

• Bitcoin harvesting

• Video repository or torrent cluster

• Create your own analytics system to examine social media feeds

• Running your own super computer is FUN!!!


Page

Slide 7

Why is this socially relevant?

• Super computers are used for all major scientific/engineering work

today:

– Simulating aircraft designs to reduce plane crashes

– Creating more accurate climate change forecasts

– Predict likely results of economic models before testing them in the real

economy

– Research into all forms of medicine and health care treatment

– Developing new green energy systems e.g. hydrogen fusion power plants

– The list of disciplines that use super computers is basically endless

• Society lacks HPC experts: there aren't enough

programmers, engineers, administrators, or architects to build the

computers to meet the demand

• Proliferating HPC knowledge will ensure that hyper-scale

simulation/modeling systems can be built and managed


Page

Slide 8

Why is WARP Mechanics the right firm to do this?

• WARP Mechanics’ mission is to bring super computing technologies

into broader IT markets. The MicroPod is an on-target example of

that.

• Years of experience building HPC systems

• Developed the "PetaPod HPC" system in partnership with Hyve

Solutions

– The MicroPod is a scaling down of that already-established architecture

• It will take considerable staff time to port this solution to VMs and

commodity hardware, but the project is well within WARP

Mechanics’ expertise

• WARP Mechanics personnel like working on HPC systems. We

don't do this because we have to. We do it because we are true

nerds at heart - just as we know some of you are too!


Page

Slide 9

What can I do to help?

If you believe that accelerating scientific progress is a worthy

goal, and that expanding the HPC talent pool with help with that, then:

• Buy a T-Shirt or two to support the Kickstarter project

http://tiny-url.org/micropod

• Promote the open source project page so we can build a community

of interested nerds, to run MicroPods once the project is complete:

http://www.micropodhpc.com

• Important! Forward those links to your nerdy or socially-conscious

friends








Documents

MicroPod HPC: Personal Parallel Computer