Among the many impressive stories to be heard at the Ohio Supercomputer Center booth here in Reno is that of its Blue Collar Computing initiative. And how it saved Big Bird. But first things first

Blue Collar Computing was launched in 2004 to give small- and medium-sized companies access to the kind of virtual modeling and simulation that would ordinarily be available only to Fortune 500-type behemoths. They describe their efforts as “democratizing supercomputing” by providing hardware, software, and training that would be out of reach to us mere mortals who can’t put a high-performance server on the VISA card, spend thousands on software licenses, and hire a squadron of programmers.

Few displays here on the exhibit hall floor in Reno could create more slack-jawed admiration than that of HLRS. We gathered around the big screen to watch the collaborative, real-time viewing and manipulation of a 3-D car engine model by…

Our noble goal of visiting every display at SC07 devolved, due to the crowds and number of booths, to passing slowly by every display and stopping to chat when we could. Two spots, however, commanded daily pilgrimages: NASA and Fusion-io….

At GCG, we’re all about business value. As much as we love the new new thing, it has to pencil out. That said, we sat in on IBM’s “Mainframe Gas Gauge” teleconference to learn more about monitoring power usage and…

IBM Corporation announced today that a new process for reclaiming silicon wafers has been developed at its Burlington, Vermont facility.  Until now, silicon wafers have been scrapped at a rate of 7,500 per day because they contain intellectually property and…

We’ve been a bit lazy on the blogging front, a bunch of business travel, coupled with the demands of getting this particular survey out the door have pushed blogging down a couple of pegs on ‘gotta get this done now’ list.

This new survey has taken up quite a bit of bandwidth around here. We had 297 enterprise x86 server customers answer a whole bunch of questions including: they’re dealing with power/cooling/floor space issues, which vendor does the best job of quoting/pricing deals, what they’re doing about x86 virtualization, which chip vendor has captured their heart (Intel, AMD, neither?), along with all of the vendor vs. vendor ratings on technical (performance, availability, quality, etc.), customer support (service, promise keeping, advice, etc.), and other issues (road maps, R&D prowess, trustworthiness, etc.)

GCG senior staff have completed the most harrowing leg of their VMware road trip: a 149-mile stretch of switchbacks, scooter-sized roadway, and bovine obstacles between Bodega Bay and Leggett, CA on State Highway 1. In defense of our route choice, it didn’t look so bad on the Verizon Navigator

A recent Business Week article discussed the potential for a techie president. Many in the industry are sure to agree with the following sentiment expressed by Adam Kovacevich, a spokesman for Google: “We want to make sure the next President is a ‘tech President.'” We at GCG heartily concur decisions affecting high tech such as science and engineering education incentives, the expansion of Internet access to rural and inner-city areas, and worker visas are made at the highest levels. A healthy tech industry contributes to the economic health of the United States….

I used to find it irritating, back in the day, to watch a genuinely amusing TV comedy and become distracted from the jokes by the unnecessary laugh track.

One session I attended at last week’s VMworld evoked that same sort of irritation. I appreciated the basic overview provided during

Getting the Green Light for Your Virtual Infrastructure

, but the relentless cheerleading and gratuitous slams on other vendors, plus their myopia concerning other virtualization solutions was a little off-putting.

Lucian Lipinsky and Ron Pondiscio of Deloitte Consulting seemed a little out of place here in San Francisco dark suits, East-coast accents, and not drunk on the VMware Kool-Aid. These gentlemen like VMware and presented common-sense rationale for its implementation, but almost alone in a sea (well, in this case, a bay) of virtualization fervor, they sounded a note of reason.

First of all, this isn’t new. Anyone heard of mainframes? In the 60s? Or server consolidation on Unix in the 90s and 00s? Get real.