Linux

Michael Dell this morning addressed attendees of the SC08 conference and spoke of the 'fourth wave' of supercomputing where powerful HPC-based clusters will be used by organizations of all sizes to solve complex compute problems.

SC08 is taking place in Dell's backyard in Austin, Texas, and Dell is taking the opportunity to show the gathering of some of the world's most prestigious scientists, engineers, programmers, researches and educators Dell's engineering prowess when it comes to high performance computing.

In his keynote, Michael spoke of how supercomputing was previously reserved only for those who could afford it - a trait traceable back to the beginning of supercomputing. In the 1970s, the first wave of supercomputing was dominated by specialized processors and proprietary operating systems. The second wave in the 80s and 90s was more focused on advancements in microprocessor-based systems. The third wave showed an increase in the percentage of HPC clusters in the Top 500 list. And finally, we're now entering a new period of high-performance computing that’s defined by further standardization across the HPC ecosystem. This “fourth wave” will make powerful HPC clusters accessible for the first time to more organizations, large and small, worldwide.

Here's what Dell announced during SC08:

-- Dell, Intel and Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) jointly announced the availability of LLNL's Hyperion cluster for use by the HPC community.

-- The Texas Advanced Computing Center's (TACC) Dell Stallion virtualization cluster will be the largest in the world comprising 45 Dell 30-inch flat panel monitors (307 million pixels) powered by Dell XPS desktop gaming systems.

-- Michael also discussed the new NVIDIA GPU that will soon be available in Dell Precision workstations.

Dell had numerous HPCC demonstrations during the show in its large booth and had a number of speakers that presented papers on a variety of topics. The show runs through Thursday of this week.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Reza Rooholamini from Dell's Clustering and Solutions Group about the latest trends in supercomputing. I've known Reza since I first joined the company in 1999, when Dell was first beginning its foray into the high performance clustering business. Back then, x86-based systems were a rarity on the Top500 list and our presence started with just a 64-node cluster at the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing. Each node on that system had a quad Pentium 3 Xeon that ran at 500Mhz running Windows NT.

Today, the Top500 list features more than 400 x86-based systems and we are seeing the same peak performance that was previously only possible on a supercomputer now available on a mobile workstation.

Let's hear what Reza has to say about the state of high performance computing.

Following up from my blog post from last week, we now have a simple and robust resolution for the drive partitioning issue on the Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux. Since some systems with 8GB or 16GB solid state drives (SSD's) only have 4 GB of space formatted, we needed a simple method to extend the existing root partition and filesystem to fill the entire disk. The solution we decided upon is to add the fix to one of the operating system packages, and push this package out to customers via the software update process, so that the resolution is relatively transparent.

For customers that regularly update their system software, this problem will be automatically resolved the next time an update is performed. For those that don't regularly update their system software, perform the following steps:

1. From the Ubuntu main menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System -> Administration -> Update Manager
2. Once the Update Manager window loads, click on "Check", and enter your password when prompted
3. Click on Install Updates to update your system software
4. Once all of the updates are installed, restart your system when prompted.

During your system restart, the system partition will be resized, after which your operating system will have access to the entire drive. To verify that you this process is successful, from the Ubuntu main menu, select System -> Administration -> System Monitor, and then select the "File Systems" tab. Look for a line that starts with "/dev/sda2"; for a system with an 8GB drive, the "Total" column should list something above "6 GiB", while for a 16GB drive, this should list something above "14 GiB".

For those interested in the specific details, the fix for this has been added to the ume-config-belmont package, version 0.77.3 and later, and posted to the Ubuntu Mini apt repository.

Update: If you have already partitioned the remaining space manually, this update will not make any changes to your partitioning, and will have no effect.

Lots of folks within Dell are committed to Linux initiatives.  Ubuntu is a good example. Since we committed to offer it on certain consumer systems back in May last year, we've added many countries outside the US. Beyond just making it available though, we've also spent a lot of time to make it work right out of the box.

And that's why I wanted to take a few minutes to congratulate Dell's own Mario Limonciello for being named to the Ubuntu Core Development Team.   Core-Dev members have the ability to update packages in the Ubuntu 'main' and 'restricted' components.  Mario joins this elite team of developers based on the strength of his long-standing contributions as as Master of the Universe (MOTU), development of the Mythbuntu distribution, and the excellent work ensuring Ubuntu on Dell desktops and notebooks "just works".  Because 'main' packages are on every install CD, his work will benefit all Ubuntu users, not just Dell owners.

WITH GREAT POWER THERE MUST ALSO COME - - GREAT RESPONSIBILITY! Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) - The first Spider-Man story. (credit Wikipedia)

Good job Mario!

Several customers (notably feranick and aysui on IdeaStorm) and tech websites (Boy Genius Report, Gizmodo, and Mobile Computer Mag) have pointed out that 8GB and 16GB drives on the Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux are not fully formatted. The manufacturing facility has only been partitioning the hard drives up to 4GB, leaving the extra space on the hard drive unformatted. This essentially leaves that space unuseable by customers until it is partitioned and formatted by the operating system. This problem has been corrected in our factory, and future shipments of the Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux should have fully-formatted hard drives.

Update from Lionel: On Friday last week, John posted details on a fix for this issue.

For customers wishing to be able to use the extra unformatted disk space immediately, if you purchased a USB DVD drive with your Mini, you may use the system restore DVD included with your system to completely reinstall the operating system. The installation process will completely reformat the entire hard drive and reinstall the OS, allowing you access to the entire drive. If you use this method, be sure to back up any data you have on the system, as this process will overwrite all data on the drive.

We're working on a simple method for customers to use to format/reclaim the unused hard drive space without reinstalling the OS. As our expert Linux customers know, there are several methods for doing this. However, we're evaluating which methods are both the easy and safe to use. I'll post that information soon when we have a recommendation.

Since I'm back in the saddle again... while catching up on some reading, I came across a post from the VAR Guy that I thought was worth spending some time on. In that post, the VAR Guy notes that we advertised a Ubuntu-based Inspiron Mini 9 over the weekend in some newspapers. I've done a bit of digging, and think those ads are US-based.

Since we launched Ubuntu-based consumer PCs back in May last year, one of the most common requests is that we advertise Linux more. Recent examples include ideas like Show more Ubuntu Pride from user meoblast001.

I don't mean to make a bigger deal out of this than it is, but the fact is that this is a small step in that direction. It's a small step, but it is a step.

We offer Ubuntu on select systems in several different several different countries. see this post for an update on that front. And for the Mini 9 Ubuntu fans out there, in case you missed it, check out Anne Camden's blog post and vlog that covers the custom interface that comes with Ubuntu 8.04 on the Mini 9.

If you want to browse the Ubuntu-based systems we offer, go to www.dell.com/ubuntu