SGI accelerates the cloud

So SGI/Rackable have launched a cloud service with technical HPC focus: Cyclone

The really interesting bit is that the multiple server types they offer are differentiated by more than the traditional two axes - CPU & memory. They offer hybrid nodes with GPU or Tilera accelerators.

Presumably they are either solving some thorny user-multiplexing issues, or are resolving whole machine instances for each user. Tough choice.

Acorn vs Apple

I find it amusing that Apple's new iPad uses a chip christened the A4, considering they released the Newton right around the time that Acorn released the Acorn A4 laptop...

History [pdf!]

Ramping up Research Traffic on SEACOM

While TENET has enjoyed high-speed interchange of traffic with GÉANT before, it has mostly been from its nodes co-located in London (e.g. local mirrors).

However, it looks like things are heating up - traffic of up to 700 Mbps between the SANReN ring in Gauteng...

and GÉANT in Europe...

Interestingly, none of the TENET graphs show which client networks this is going to, so perhaps this is just an internal test or mirror population?

Return of CINX

The ISPA has re-launched CINX (the Cape Town Internet Exchange). PR here.

Nothing on the old CINX and why it was discontinued, except for a rather oblique statement that there is now has "more than enough Internet traffic to justify an exchange for the city".

No graphs for the exchange yet, but the TENET folks are on the ball and you can view their port graphs here. 10 Mbps in Cape Town doesn't seem like much compared to the 100 Mbps of JINX (which looks suspiciously flat, although there is a 175 Mbps spike in there).

Excellent news for local providers.

End of an era

TENET now runs all institutional traffic over SEACOM:

Bandwidth usage on the SAT-3 portions has dwindled to almost nothing; the SAT-3 connectivity should terminate sometime in the next month or so.

Interesting to see some BGP traffic on the Telia backup link - perhaps routing changes to some of the institutional ASs propagating through and settling down?