Live at Super Computing 22

Join us live at Super Computing 22!

Webinar Synopsis:

• Meeting Dave LaDuke

• Rocky’s Momentum

• Meeting David Dickerson

• Meeting Forrest Burt

• Immersion Cooling Trend In HPC

• Popularity Of Rocky At SC22

• Forrest’s Favorite Part Of SC22

• Meeting Brock Taylor

• Brock’s Favorite Part Of SC22

Speakers:

• Zane Hamilton, Vice President Sales Engineering, CIQ

  • LinkedIn

• Dave LaDuke, Strategy Marketing and Operations, CIQ

  • LinkedIn

• David Dickerson, Director of Channel and Ecosystem Partners, CIQ

  • LinkedIn

• Forrest Burt, High Performance Computing Systems Engineer, CIQ

  • LinkedIn

• Brock Taylor, Vice President High Performance Computing & Strategic Partners, CIQ

  • LinkedIn

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Note: This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors.

Full Webinar Transcript:

Zane Hamilton:

All right. Sorry guys. This is a little bit of a live stream and a live place. This is new for us, so we are trying to do the best we can. We appreciate you joining us. I am Zane Hamilton with CIQ. I am here with Dave LaDuke and we are actually here live at SC 22 in Dallas, Texas. Dave, tell us about what's going on at this event and what you have seen.

Meeting Dave LaDuke [00:16]

Dave LaDuke:

It has been an amazing event for us. Thanks to all the people at hard work that happened from all the people at CIQ and a beautiful booth here. We have been pretty much full the entire show. Things are starting to wind down now as it is the last day. I believe we have collected well over 600 leads now, which is fantastic. It was far above our goal.

One of the things I have discovered at the show is how much positive goodwill there is for Rocky Linux. Pretty much everyone I talk to comes in and they see Rocky and there smiling. They are saying we are deploying it, or we are really interested. We hear a lot about it. One of the things that we love to do is walk around to the side of the booth If we can move. 

Zane Hamilton:

Yeah, let's go this way and check it out. I am going to walk by, there is Glen. I haven't  seen Glen in a while. 

Rocky’s Momentum [1:09]

Dave LaDuke:

Over here, this is the, this is it. You may be aware of the data from Theora Apple chart, the extra packages for Enterprise Linux data. There is data to be analyzed.  Brian does every week. The fresh data that we have today, as everyone can see Rocky Linux momentum is incredible.  It is now the fastest growing enterprise clinics on the market. This blows people away. Actually, a lot of people are not surprised by that. It is the theme of our show, SP Hire.  The growth of Rocky Linux and where we are building. There are amazing people here. I recently just had a conversation with, super Computer Center in Stuttgart, Germany,  HLRS. They told me that they have deployed 5,632 Rocky nodes. So, a lot of high quality conversations are asking here at SC22. 

Zane Hamilton:

That is fantastic. It is exciting. Thank you very much for that, Dave. Have you guys talked to some of the other guys around here to see what is going on? I think we have, we have the other Dave.

Thanks for coming over, Dave. We appreciate it. What have you experienced during this SC? I know it is your first. It is my first, there is a lot to see and a lot to take in, and there is a science of every shape, form, and fashion. I know you have been talking to a lot of our partners. 

Meeting David Dickerson [2:39]

David Dickerson:

Yeah, I mean, I think the one thing that stood out the most is the quality of conversations that have been taking place, not only in every booth with the people that I am meeting for the first time. I mean, even you and I are meeting for the first time in-person. For me, it has really been taking part in those conversations with partners, what the challenges are and what worlds they are seeing.

Then the question that everybody tends to be asking is, Hey, is Rocky available on this? Does this run on Rocky?  It has been fantastic from that standpoint. But just the show in general, it is always fun when you get to see a lot of engagement versus, do you have a shirt? Can I take that hat? What do you have that I can have for free?  It has been a lot more, what are you guys doing in the world? How are you trying to help me solve my problems?  It has been great to see that. 

Zane Hamilton:

That is awesome. Have you had time to walk around and spend time in the other booths? 

David Dickerson:

I have. I went and spent some time with one of our newer partners at Tempo. We just did a PR release with them where they are running on top of Rocky, which is great. I talked with the guys at HPE and Dell at Viking, and Seagate. I spent some time over at the Seagate booth. Jonathan was just over at Intel giving a talk. We had to talk at Silicon Mechanics. We have been everywhere. Like the chart  goes everybody is running on Rocky and everybody is talking to CIQ. It is great. 

Zane Hamilton:

Absolutely, and our friends over in Data In Science. It has been great. And then, Cambridge has brought a lot of people to talk to us too. 

David Dickerson:

Cambridge has been wonderful about that. They have got a lot of customers that are asking a lot of questions about how they make that migration.  

Zane Hamilton:

That is awesome. Thank you very much. I am going to find Forrest and see what he has to say. I know Forrest has had an exciting experience being at SC his first time. He is doing a lot of the science and understanding of where we have been and what we have been talking about for a long time, and trying to tie that all back together for the researchers. I know he has been walking around and seeing a lot of different things and I am excited to hear Forrest's view of how SC is going. Welcome back Forrest. 

Meeting Forrest Burt [4:54]

Forrest Burt:

Thank you for having me on the webinar. It has been great to be at SC22. This is my first SC. I have been all over doing all kinds of stuff with this whole massive event, which we are at here. Just to tell you a little bit about how it is gone, what we have seen, it has been really cool and interesting. First off,  I have spent a lot of time with these webinars in the past discussing chips and novels, but this time around I actually had to see the novel Silicon. I got to meet different companies like, (inaudible) and stuff like that, which are putting out these really, really innovative, interesting novel, like I said, slick chips. This time I actually got to see and hold them. Actually, I got to take selfies with them and stuff. I have seen them on LinkedIn. I have a couple great ones with me. That was awesome.

Immersion Cooling Trend In HPC [5:42]

In general, there are tons of awesome technology outlets everywhere I look. People have all these crazy different server systems and stuff like that they are offering. We are starting to see a real trend of HPC toward the need for immersion cooling in GPUs. But some of these, the thermal profiles, and some of these are like a sub lot H 100 s that are coming out. So all over here, immersion cooling is  moving from this novelty in HPC to now the reality of how a lot of sites are doing core water blocks, that type of thing. Liquid Cooling has been a huge thing at this entire, 

Zane Hamilton:

It has become a necessity. 

Forrest Burt:

Yeah, it is becoming a necessity. 

Zane Hamilton:

That is why, I mean, you look around, it seems like everywhere you stand right here, there are four, five different liquid submersions here, right here close. 

Forrest Burt:

When you have eight 700 watts, 700 watts, that is way more than any GPU has been before. So, when you have eight 700 watts GPUIs sitting inside of a chassis for you that thermo profile definitely needs that immersion. That has been really cool to see all those types of techs that are around all that type of stuff. In general, it is not just technology. There are all kinds of different interesting people, all kinds of incredible wines. In addition to all the private industry vendors, we have all kinds of universities, all kinds of researchers, all kinds of people that are here to discuss supercomputing. What they are doing with supercomputing. How supercomputing affects their work. How it has changed the entire  sphere for them once they were in it. It has been really incredible to get to talk to all those types of people, get to hear their use cases, get to hear their stories, get to find out what they are looking for.

Popularity of Rocky At SC22 [7:37]

It has been a lot of fun. I originally came out of the academic sphere, so I have a lot of fun. (inaudible) More on a CIQ side of things, we have met tons of people that are interested in Rocky and our whole substack products. EWe are almost totally out of swag. We have had tons of people come and discuss the project with all levels from students trying to deploy Rocky at student plus competition,  all the way up to people that are running thousands and thousands of nodes on Rocky now. We have, I think I have said previously, but for example, TACC is now running their Lonestar6 version system on Rocky. That was really cool to find out. We have seen huge amounts of interest in it.

It is the next community enterprises. A lot of people are really interested in finding out more about it in general, about all of our solutions on where to stack CIQ products. We have seen a lot of great interests there. A lot of great conversations getting the word out about what we are working on and what we are doing. That has been a fun time. In general, that just leads to this being a massively productive time for us all. You know that side of things.  In general, more of an internal CIQ view, this is our first SC  so this is our first big conference that we have done a show like this. We have got like almost a full third of our company here together working on this whole booth, about 20, 25 people.

It is the first time a lot of us have met in person being a remote company. So, it has been a lot of fun to get to meet the fellow incredible people at CIQ and collaborate in person here. That has been a blast. I have really, really enjoyed catching up and meeting all these people, talking to them, actually seeing them in 3D, to not only see these people but, hear their voices, which is not a fried audio section. We have had a lot of fun here. That is about the whole update. Like I said, this is my first SC and I have had, I have had an absolute blast with this. I have hardly been able to sit still on the floor. I have been all over AI chip companies, researchers, prior contacts.This is like one of the funnest things I have ever done. 

Zane Hamilton:

You have been all over, but what has been your favorite thing that you have seen? Just the one thing that stands out the most to you? What is it from a personal perspective, a work perspective, that one thing that made it worth the trip, if you saw nothing else.

Forrest’s Favorite Part of SC22 [10:12]

Forrest Burt:

Getting to meet the people of CIQ for one, that was the biggest thing. But on the technical side, it was the AI chips for me. I spent a lot of time looking at that getting into as a research lab and at this whole thing, like I said, Cerebras. A lot of these companies brought tech to it. I have selfies and myself next to it. It is just incredible to see where that kind of computing is going and where there is now this need for these custom chips and there is all these different solutions that are coming up around it.

It will be fascinating to see what sticks around and what ends up becoming some of the movers and shakers in the hardware field. I would say on the technical level that it is probably the biggest thing. It is getting to actually see in person the Wafer-Scale Engine-2, which is huge chip. Getting to see stable diffusion, running on the groq chips, seeing one of those in person. The white matter folks brought optical interconnects. All that type of tech, I had a blast. 

Zane Hamilton:

Did you see any old technology sitting around? 

Forrest Burt:

Yes, of course. 

Zane Hamilton:

I figured that was going to be the one that you would choose. 

Forrest Burt:

That was, that was, it was, you know, there has been a lot.

Zane Hamilton:

There's been a lot. 

Forrest Burt:

Yeah. It was like day one. Yesterday, I got done with this sort of thing and I am thinking to myself, wow, wait, that was all just in one day. It has been nuts. But they have here this whole thing, the Cray-1, serial number one, the original Seymour Cray supercomputer that was shipped to Los Alamos.  I really liked what Justin, who is behind the camera, had to say about it. Well, it was cool to see Cray-1, it was cooler to see Forrest than to see the Cray-1. 

Zane Hamilton:

It was totally worth the trip for that alone. Absolutely. 

Forrest Burt:

Oh yeah. It was super cool to see all that complex wiring that went into that very manual,  just that very manual way of making computers before integrated circuits and stuff like that.

That was really, really cool to see. I got some great photos of myself next to that and just what an incredible piece of computing to see Cray-1 serial number one, the original Los Alamos first Seymour Cray machine here. That was a lot of fun. That was a real treat to randomly come up across. That was really fun. 

Zane Hamilton:

That is great. Thank you Forrest. Appreciate it. Thanks for wrapping me up. 

Forrest Burt:

Are you coming next year to SC? We are. We are already signed up, ready to go there. We will be there, come visit us. We have already had, like I said, tons of people coming by here. Great conversations. We would love to hear what people are doing with Rocky and Apptainer Warewulf, we are really excited to get Fuzzball out into the market so people can start working on that. We will be here next year and we hope to see you.

Zane Hamilton:

Don't wait until next year though. Reach out to us. 

Forrest Burt:

Yeah, reach out to us. But, definitely come and see us next year. 

Meeting Brock Taylor [13:01]

Zane Hamilton:

Thank you. Here we go. Welcome Brock. 

Brock Taylor:

Thank you. 

Zane Hamilton:

How has your experience been this year compared to the past? Because you have been here many times? 

Brock Taylor:

I have been here many times.  I actually don't know how many times. Eight, nine, it might be 10. It kind of all blurs together. 

Zane Hamilton:

How has this one been different? 

Brock Taylor:

Well, for me, it is my first time at the show not being part of a Silicon vendor. That is a big change and it has been an interesting one. The show, I think, was definitely, you know, last year was at St. Louis and it was still very much hampered by the pandemic. This year it has definitely come back,  still a little ways to go. I think next year you will probably see the,  back to its normal size, which is, it is pretty big and busy, but it has been really good. It has been good to be able to see lots of different people. It is a very tight community. You know a lot of people, especially if you've been here many times. It is one place you see everybody all in one place. They call it a reunion, it kind of is. It has been really nice to reconnect face to face with those people. To go around and see and talk to the different groups and it is a great place to really drive the partnerships that we have.

I think that has been one of the best things about the show, which is not surprising just how positive it has been to talk to different people.  I can see how excited they are to work with us. Of course, we are just as excited to work with them. It has been a very enjoyable part of the show. It has been surprising how many people are coming to seek us out and actually have those conversations. It has been a long time since I have spent this much time on the show floor,  which has been very enjoyable. That is also different.  I have not been running to meetings at different hotels and being confined and just seeing a few people. It has been in the booth. It has been high traffic. It has been great conversations. 

Zane Hamilton:

Yeah. I have got to say we start every morning at 10:00 am. It seems like as soon as we start up, it has been from 10:00 am until they flash the lights and run us out at six o'clock, we still have people in the booth hanging out. It has been very exciting. We really appreciate it.

Brock Taylor:

It has been a lot of, you know, when you leave and come back, it is like three people stop by wanting to know where you were. I'm just down there. I was talking to somebody else, they came here and I had them on my list to go seek them out and I did not have time and I was just so pleased because all of a sudden I turn around and they are here. Oh, I need to talk to them. It has been fantastic.

Zane Hamilton:

That is awesome. If you have had a chance to walk around, I know you have given some talks and at some other booth. Yeah. What has been your favorite thing that you have seen so far? 

Brock’s Favorite Part Of SC22 [16:12]

Brock Taylor:

Oh, I do not know that I have a favorite thing. It is like asking for your favorite song. It is just being able to see some of the different things that different companies are doing. There was one, it was a file system they were actually showing, they walked me through exactly what they were doing. How they are doing it, and what kind of performance they are getting. I will say I did not ask permission, but it was a fantastic talk. It is really a person, because they are talking right to you. You could see it. We just instantly see the partnership.

That may be one of my favorite things on the show.  Doug Eadline. He had his robotic dog here. That was a big hit. 

Zane Hamilton:

That was a very big hit. You remember the dog's name? 

Brock Taylor:

I forgot the dog's name. 

Zane Hamilton:

Potato.

Brock Taylor:

Potato. That is right. Potato was in the house. There is lots of good stuff.  I think, again, probably my favorite thing though is how many people I have talked to that come in, they will come in and talk probably about Rocky was the most popular thing. But the more you talk, it is just like the conversation can go on way longer than they expected. Then one person said, You have answered the questions that I did not know I had. Yeah. It has been fun.

Zane Hamilton:

Awesome. It has been nice for me to be able to meet the people we have had on this webinar. I got to meet Griznog, I got to meet Stack, I got, got to talk to Alan Sill and Misha. It has been fun just to meet everybody in person and actually see them. 

Brock Taylor:

I ran into Fernanado the other day. It is a tight community. This is the one place where it is the best chance of running into a lot of people. Not everybody gets to come every year. You always see people you work with, see where they have gone, what they are doing. Reconnect. Plan these things.

Zane Hamilton:

And Dr. Dave, I forgot Dr. Dave hung out in the booth for quite a while too. It is awesome. Thank you Brock. I appreciate it.

Brock Taylor:

Absolutely. I actually have to go run, talk to one of those people. 

Zane Hamilton:

Thanks sir. Well guys, we hope you enjoyed the time that we had, just briefly showing you what we have. What we have been up to and showing you the booth. We ask that you come back after Thanksgiving and we will probably dive in more on what we learned. What we saw. We really appreciate your time. It has been great. Thank you very much.