Sharing Technology
Don Kretsch
"High performance computing is an exciting and fast growing area of information technology," said Don Kretsch, Engineering Director at Sun Microsystems.
"Originally developed for analysing and processing complex scientific data, the technology is now mature enough for people to apply it effectively in many industries and applications so that it is used to bring us not only climate forecasts and nuclear weapons, but also Pringles potato chips and Tide detergent," he said.
The presentation focused on HPC industry trends and the company's strategies and tools to develop the best hardware and software for its clients to meet and anticipate industry needs, before Don Kretsch and his colleague Liang Chen discussed Sun's multi-core system and parallel programming tools.
The day-long visit was one outcome of a five-year collaboration between Dr Peter Strazdins and Professor Alistair Rendell from the Department of Computer Science, both of whom are Chief Investigators on two ARC Linkage Grants.
Sun's Vice President, Tim Marsland, who also visited the College was impressed with the work that the team in DCS is doing in assessing the effectiveness of the memory placement optimizations (MPO) subsystem that Sun built in OpenSolaris for Opteron-based systems, and reports his pleasure in discovering some of the work that the ANU team is doing in this area.
PhD students Joseph Antony and Andrew Over who were funded from the first ARC Linkage Grant are now in the writing up phase of their research and together with Dr Rui Yang they are looking forward to further collaboration with developers at Sun.
The visit to ANU is also part of Sun Microsystems good corporate citizen strategy to "eliminate the digital divide" through a framework that includes involving its employees in mentoring and volunteer roles, providing financial support to educational programs that encourage greater uptake of IT in disadvantaged communities, and appointing 'Ambassadors' in various universities.
"The Ambassador program is a worldwide effort," said Danny Robson, a new postgraduate student in DCS who is funded by the recently won ARC Linkage Grant.
"I became an Ambassador last year to encourage student involvement on campus and to help them to understand and learn more about Sun technologies. I will be assisting with technical demonstrations, organising seminars, and talking to staff and students about what is on offer," he said.
"I also have the opportunity to be mentored by Sun staff, and participate in Online discussion about the benefits of free software. We discuss all sorts of ideas, tools and philosophies in computer science with other Ambassadors around the world," he said.
Not everyone involved in computing supports the philosophy of 'free' access to source code, and some can be quite zealous in being for it. However, in Danny's opinion there are massive benefits to the creators and users of open source software, and he like many others is a keen advocate.
"When a creator open sources their work, both they and the public stand to gain. The public receives unrestricted access to useful software and the creator gains a community of potential and enthusiastic developers.
"By releasing their flagship product, the Solaris Operating System, Sun gains an extended group of developers, evangelists and users who will pursue a multitude of projects which would not ordinarily be possible, and then the public benefits from a professional and well-engineered operating system for a multitude of uses," said Danny.
To learn more about the
Ambassador program
To learn more about Open Source philosophy
Contact Danny Robson
