SUNNYVALE, Calif., November 1, 2010 -- The HPC Advisory Council, a leading worldwide organization for high-performance computing research, development, outreach and education, today announced it has reached over 50 Best Practices for a multitude of high-performance applications. The HPC Advisory Council provides best practices, which through experience and research, have shown to improve clustering and applications efficiency, scalability and productivity.

"The Council's best practices results in faster simulations, quicker time-to-market for consumer-based products, ease-of-use for IT staff when setting up and maintaining clusters, and getting the maximum return on their infrastructure investment," says Gilad Shainer, chairman of the HPC Advisory Council. "In just over two years, the Council has become a valuable resource for IT end-users who require open source or commercial HPC and cloud-based application performance guidelines and best practices for some of their most important networking and infrastructure purchasing decisions."

With over 50 best practices developed for over 26 HPC and cloud-based applications, the HPC Advisory Council is providing the HPC end-user community valuable information to improve their system and application usage. Such applications include, but not limited to, automotive design, weather forecasting, chemical and biological interactions, crash simulations, and atmospheric research. For more information, visit the HPC Advisory Council Best Practices website.

"One of the Council's main goals is HPC outreach and education, and with its nearly 170 member organizations, is proud to achieve this remarkable number of published best practices," said Scot Schultz, director of educational outreach for the HPC Advisory Council. "In parallel of publishing our work for the behalf of the HPC community, we present and provide hands-on training through our many international council workshops throughout each year. We welcome new application best practice suggestions from the HPC community and look forward to continue and enrich our publication database."

"The council's vision and focus on deeper understanding of emerging capabilities and industry trends -- such as cloud, HPCaaS and virtualized HPC -- is driving the evolution of HPC far beyond its traditional definition and understanding," said Cydney Stevens, HPC Advisory Council Research Steering Committee. "In addition to its growing compendium of performance and optimization best practices, across a broad range of platforms and architectures for traditional applications and workloads, the council is providing the community a forum that actively challenges and encourages interactive participation bridging the expertise and disciplines of the past to the next generation usage models."

About the HPC Advisory Council

The HPC Advisory Council's mission is to bridge the gap between high-performance computing (HPC) use and its potential, bring the beneficial capabilities of HPC to new users for better research, education, innovation and product manufacturing, bring users the expertise needed to operate HPC systems, provide application designers with the tools needed to enable parallel computing, and to strengthen the qualification and integration of HPC system products. For more information about the HPC Advisory Council, visit www.hpcadvisorycouncil.com.

Council Members include: 3M, 451 Group, Ace Computers, Advanced Cluster Systems, Advanced Clustering Technologies, Allinea Software, Altair Engineering, AMD, ANSYS, Inc., Appro, Ashley Pittman, ATK Space Systems, ATP Electronics, Auburn University, Avago Technologies, Bay Microsystems, Blue Ridge Numerics, Bright Computing, BroadGroup, Centre For Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Centre For High Performance Computing, CIMCORP INFORMATICA SA, C.S.I.R.O, CD-adapco, Clustercorp, ClusterVision, Codeplay Software, Colfax International, Colt Technology Services, Corning Cable Systems, Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing, DataDirect Networks, Dawning Information Industry, Dell, Dildy Enterprises, Digital Waves, Diglio A. Simoni, Evergrid, Eyescale Software GmbH, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, FireDaemon, Gabriel Consulting Group, GigaSpaces Technologies, Gnodal, Go Virtual Nordic, GraphStream Incorporated, The George Washington University, HCL Infosystems, HP, HPCTech Corporation, IBRIX, IBSwitches.com, Inspur, Institute of Network and Information Security, Intrumental, Intalio, Intel, InterSect360 Research, IT Brand Pulse, The Israeli Association of Grid Technologies (IGT), KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology), Kinder Morgan CO2, Kirchhoff-Institute of Physics, Ruprecht-Karls University, Koi Computers Inc., Lamprey Networks, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory / NERSC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore Software Technology Corporation, Locuz Enterprise Solutions Limited, LSI Corporation, Luxtera, Magma Design Automation, McGill University, Mellanox Technologies, Microsoft, Microway, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, National Research Center for Intelligent Computing Systems (NCIC), NEC Corporation of America, NET Consult, Netweb Technologies, Network Equipment Technologies, Numerical Algorithms Group, NVIDIA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Obsidian Strategics, OCF plc, Ohio State University, Panasas, ParTec Cluster Competence Center GmbH, PCPC Direct, Peking University, Penguin Computing, Platform Computing, Pro SYS, Queen's University, Quellan/Intersil, Quix Computerware AG, RAID, Inc., RNA networks, SGI, Scalable Graphics, Scalable Informatics, ScaleMP, Schlumberger, Science + Computing ag, Scientific Computing, Silicon Mechanics, Simula Research Laboratory, SoftModule, StreamScale, Stony Brook University, Sumisho Computer Systems, Sun Microsystems, Supermicro, Swiss National Supercomputing Centre CSCS, System Fabrics Works, Terascala, Texas Advanced Computing Center, The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing, Transtec AG, TOTAL E&P Research and Technology USA, T-Platforms, Tycrid, University of Ljubljana, University of Utah Center for High Performance Computing, University of Wyoming, uSTAR, Versatus HPC, Virginia Tech University, Virtual Machine Company, VMware, Voltaire, VXTECH, University of Wisconsin Madison, W.L. Gore & Associates, Wipro InfoTech, Wolfram Research, XLsoft China, Z Research

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Source: HPC Advisory Council