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Iain Beckingham

 

I'm currently on a plane to Munich for our annual training event for the team where we will no doubt have some powerpoint fest (personally I prefer October fest!).  I shouldn't knock it as the training is excellent, very interactive and well received by the team.  However, I think we'll have a sweepstake about the total number of slides.  I'm guessing 8 sessions a day * 30 slides each for 4 days is approx 960 slides.    Personally, I'd really like to see 10 slides max in a 45 minutes presentation and have  people talk to the slides rather than repeat verbatim what's on them.  What are people thinking when they do that?  That I can't actually read. 

 

Now I'm on my soapbox - well actually I'm still on the plane which is delayed because of the storms - my 2nd gripe is that people cram as much on to the slides as possible.  In fact, I've done some analysis of this in the last 30 seconds.  The higher up the company structure one goes, the less cluttered the slides are.  When you get to CxO level, there's normally some nice pictures and graphics, only 3 bullet points consisting of 3 words and the message is articulated really well - the slides tell a story rather than being a story to read.  Others try and get as many words in 8 point font onto the slide as possible.  Don't get me wrong - I'm a fan when it's used correctly - it's almost a victim of it's own success.

 

I don't think Intel is alone in this, and judging by some of  the presentations I saw at VM'09 I know it isn't.  Perhaps the industry should adopt a 10 slide rule.  If it can't be explained in 10 slides, then either it's far too technical for my brain or the audience will fall asleep.  Any tips out there on how to make presentations more fun, stimulating, interesting etc.  or got any interesting death by powerpoint stories.  Any takers for the largest number of slides in a deck? 

 

I mentioned that I went to VM'09 last week at Earls Court.  It was good to get out of the office and talk to some customers as well as hear and see what other industry players are doing.  One thing that did catch my eye (and not just mine) was the Microsoft Surface demonstration.  This looked like one of those table top pub games from yester-year (ok - I'm showing my age here).  Totally interactive - no keyboard/mouse  - you can resize photos just by making your thumb and index finger closer together.    I'm sure it won't be long until this is in a form factor that can hang on the wall. [Caption competition anyone?]

 

PIC_0062.jpg

 

I also went along to some of the presentations - with virtualisation being the theme of the show, I obviously have to write something about it.  Paul D'Cruz talked about how Cisco had implemented virtualisation by adopting a unified data centre in their IT group.  We've done something similar at Intel, so I was interested in a different perspective.  [the Intel whitepaper can be found here: http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3489 ]

 

On the storage side, Paul quoted a $70m cost avoidance over 4 years as a result of better utilisation of the storage.  On the server side, there was a $20m cost avoidance with 75% of new servers being virtualised.  The unified fabric saved $2m alone.  The other topic Paul touched upon was standardising on x86 hardware - something that many IT Managers/CIO's are looking at in order to reduce costs.

 

Overall, an interesting show….now to write that keynote presentation in under 10 slides….

 

~iain

 

 

 

4 Comments Permalink Tags: vm'09, powerpoint, surface_computing, cisco
Iain Beckingham

    Want to make a difference?  Then why not share your spare CPU cycles to help researchers crunch life changing problems like AIDS, Alzheimer's, Climate Warming, Malaria, and Cancer.

     

    Interested?  Not sure about it though?  Don't know what to do?  Read on...

     

    Progress Thru Processors  is an application (currently in beta)  which is available to all Facebook users. It automatically directs a computer’s idle processor power to fuel researchers’ computational efforts. The application will activate only when a PC’s performance is not being fully utilised. When your computer usage demands more processor performance, the application stops  and sits idle until spare processing capabilities then become available again.

     

    The application runs automatically as a background process on a PC and will not affect performance or any other tasks. Additionally, Progress Thru Processors does not require you to leave your computer powered on unnecessarily. By keeping your PC on only as you normally would, you will be contributing to life-changing research while still being kind to the environment.

     

    Through the application’s interface on Facebook, you will be able to track your contributions and share updates with your friends and members of the Progress Thru Processors community.

     

    This type of application isn't new - the SETI project launched in May 1999.  SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and analyzes the narrow bandwidth signals from space .  However, instead of using supercomputers, David Gedye proposed to use a virtual supercomputer composed of large numbers of Internet-connected computers, and he organized the SETI@home project to explore this idea.

     

    There are examples in the UK where this is happening as well - using standard PC's to form a 'grid' to form a massive supercomputer.  GridPP is a collaboration of physicists and computer scientists from the UK and CERN.  Currently, there is a working particle physics Grid across 17 UK institutions which will contribute more than the equivalent of 10,000 PC's.

     

    Similarly, the National Grid Service was founded in 2004 and has provided access to computational resources for hundreds of UK researchers enabling them to perform their research faster and on a larger scale than previously anticipated.  The research covers everything from real-time visualisation of blood flow through the brain to predicting the needs of city populations in 30 years time.

     

    There are three projects where you can donate you spare CPU cycles to.  Rosetta@home, which uses the additional computing power to help find cures for cancer and other diseases such as HIV and Alzheimer's. In addition to Rosetta@home, you can choose to contribute excess processor computing power to the research efforts of Climateprediction.net and Africa@home. Climateprediction.net is dedicated to increased understanding of global climate change by predicting the Earth's climate and testing the accuracy of climate models. Africa@home is currently focused on finding optimal strategies to combat malaria by studying simulation models of disease transmission and the potential impact of new anti-malarial drugs and vaccines.

     

    So what are you waiting for?  Sign up: http://apps.facebook.com/processors/new.php

     

    ~Iain

     

     

     

     

     

0 Comments Permalink
Iain Beckingham

Recently the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC09) took place in Hamburg where Intel was a platinum sponsor.  A couple of musings:

 

For Intel, it was great news - we previewed a new high end server processor code-names 'Nehalem-EX'.  In production later in the year, it will have up to 8 cores and 2 threads per core (hyper-threading), 24MB of shared cache, Integrated memory controllers to name a few of the features.  The platform will double the memory capacity - 16 DIMM's per socket,  64 DIMM's per platform (4 socket) and include advanced virtualisation features - sounds like a great platform for running VM's. 

 

But wait, there's more - we also announced an 8 socket platform.  A quick calculation means: 8 cores, 8 sockets, 2 threads per core = 128 threads.  To see what this looks like under Windows Task Manager click: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4shSQJTd0&feature=player_embedded

 

This is a high-end server so naturally it has some advanced RAS features.  It's the first Xeon® based platform to have Machine Check Architecture Recovery.  In layman's terms, it means we can detect CPU, memory and I/O errors and then work with the O/S to correct them.  The result is the system recovers from otherwise fatal errors i.e. increased uptime.  Those familiar with Itanium will recognise this technology and coupled with the increase in performance will help IT managers reduce costs if they move away from proprietary expensive RISC based systems.  For those who want to know more about this, checkout the Intel Channel  here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztPTYDllwiY&feature=channel_page

 

Secondly, the latest edition of the Top 500 list was published.  Amazingly, there are 399 based Intel systems in the Top 500 - that's almost 80%. We've come along way since the Pentium® Pro!.  For those not entirely familiar with the Top 500 list - it's essentially the most powerful 500 computers on the planet.  Naturally, high performance clusters/computers need more than just a powerful CPU - there's interconnects, I/O, memory latency, code optimisations and more to consider.  Probably another topic in its own right.

 

For those of you who are wondering what the latest top500 list looks like, you can find the latest list here : http://www.top500.org/lists/2009/06 (click on complete list at bottom of page).

 

Ok, so what does this have to do with an Olympic medal table I hear you cry? Well take a look - not a single entry from the UK in the Top 10 unlike our athletes who managed 4th overall in the 2008 Olympics.  In fact, India, Saudi Arabia, China, Canada, France, Japan and Switzerland all have higher ranking machines/clusters.  By the time the Olympics come to London, I'm hoping that the UK will have an entry in the Top 10.  Certainly our athletes at the Beijing Olympics showed we can be competitive on the world stage…it's now down to us engineers.

 

~Iain

2 Comments Permalink Tags: nehalem, xeon, hpc, threads, ex, socket
Iain Beckingham

I somehow volunteered to write something - I must have been having a good day as I said ok then.  Bit of background on me….been at Intel for almost 14 years now in various roles and am now lucky to manage a team of technical sales guys throughout Europe.  (I'm not sure if they think they are so lucky but I enjoy it!).  Anyway, I started getting into computers at an early age.  In fact, my first experience was on the Commodore Pet which for those who don't know, had a green and black screen and programs were saved/loaded from cassette.  http://oldcomputers.net/pet2001.html 

 

I then moved on to writing my first 'Hello World' program on the Commodore Vic 20.  It came with 3583 bytes of memory as standard.  So how much has your machine today got?  Probably at least 500,000 times that amount if you've got 2GB installed.  Again programs were loaded from cassette or cartridge - games like 'Alien' or 'JetPac' are probably retro now.  No Windows, mice, internet, twitter, wireless, USB, broadband, facebook, google back then.  Ooh, I sound old.

 

So what does the future hold?  Consumer ultra-thin notebooks will soon be hitting the street soon and some of the designs I've seen look really cool.  In the corporate space, technologies like AT-P (sorry - acronym speak for Intel® Anti-Theft Technology - PC Protection) will surely be a real winner.  I was unfortunate to have my laptop stolen once at a trade show and anyone who has had that experience will no what a pain it is.  Cases where laptops have gone missing have widely been reported in the press.  There was one example a couple of years back, where a certain government department admitted a laptop containing details of 2,000 people with investment ISAs had been stolen.   The laptop today is valuable, but the real value can be the data on it.

 

Intel AT-p for notebooks provides the option to activate hardware-based client-side intelligence to secure the PC and its data in the event the notebook is lost or stolen.   In the case above, a 'poison-pill' could be sent to said laptop and render it unbootable.  It can even render it useless after a certain number of login attempts.   For those who want to read more about the technology here  - follow the link: http://www.intel.com/technology/anti-theft/anti-theft-tech-brief.pdf

 

Now rather like a tracker device for a car, perhaps we should add something to the technology that once the laptop is stolen, not only does it render is useless, but it also activates a transmitter so that the authorities can locate it. 

 

Another gadget I have got installed is the Intel SSD - it's snappily called an Intel® X25-M.   I'm probably what you'd call a 'heavy user' - currently I've got 52 email windows open, 5 spreadsheets, 7 browser windows, and half the Microsoft office suite, VPN, backup, and that's the stuff I can see!   My non-scientific user test says it's certainly faster than what I had before and the battery life has also increased.  For me a test of whether a technology is any good or not is whether I would give it back - er, no (in a word or two).  Well that's easy, but I also wouldn't go back to my machine from 5 years ago - technology moves at an alarming pace and I don’t want to get left behind.

 

I'd welcome your comments…

Iain

0 Comments Permalink Tags: technology, ssd, ultra-thin, intel_anti_theft_technology_pc_protection, at-p, poison_pill

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