Sun and Supercomputers...

Another November, another Supercomputing conference (SC'06). This year we're in Tampa, Florida, a nice change from grey and rainy Southampton. It certainly is hot, in the 80s Fahrenheit, but the thunderstorms are pretty torrential too! We were honoured to be part of the huge Microsoft stand again, which is very exciting as Windows Compute Cluster Server is now a real product. Two of our videos were running on the big Plasma screen in between booth talks. The folks opposite on the Pacific Nortwest Labs stand now know more than they ever wanted to about our BAE Systems CFD project, and the Smallpeice Trust 'Computers in Engineering' course we ran in July! This year our demo was pretty cool, pushing the .NET 3 Framework, using Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, and Globus 2 accessing Windows Compute Cluster. We were performing whole Earth System simulations (atmosphere + ocean) to investigate scenarios of the Gulf Stream switching on and off. Running all of this from inside a web browser, with WPF, was one of the first times anyone had seen such Web 2.0 technology being used in anger - even the Microsoft folks ;) I'll post more about the demo on our MIHPC site (www.mihpc.net) soon! My colleague, Simon Cox, had some fun cruising around Tampa showing how supercomputing affects our everyday lives. Check out the video at www.winhpc.org .