Bristol startup Petapath is aiming to build a software tools company to exploit the move to high performance add-in cards to create compact supercomputers in offices and datacentres.
Multicore chip technologies such as Nvidia's CUDA and AMD's ATI chips are providing supercomputer levels of performance but the tools are not available to make the most of these systems, says CEO and co-founder Michal Harasimiuk, and the company has this month won a grant from the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA) for a market study to identify and assess key areas of system architecture and software methodology for such systems.
Multicore chip technologies such as Nvidia's CUDA and AMD's ATI chips are providing supercomputer levels of performance but the tools are not available to make the most of these systems, says CEO and co-founder Michal Harasimiuk, and the company has this month won a grant from the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA) for a market study to identify and assess key areas of system architecture and software methodology for such systems.
Petapath has already worked with Hewlett Packard and SGI on the European PRACE project to build 'petascale' supercomputers that are capable of over 1,000 teraflops. "It is becoming less about the silicon and more the software layer that allows the silicon to work," said Harasimiuk. "You need the infrastructure and ecosystem and also the software and tools that make it possible." There are currently four employees with three other consultants that are used regularly.
"Consulting is a means to an end - we are not a consulting business," he said. "We are also not a cluster builder, we are turning into a software company providing software and tools that help optimise existing infrastructure, with performance analysis and with performance prediction."
One area that is helping this is the emergence of OpenCL, a specification from the Kronos group like OpenGL and OpenES that allows software to be agnostic to the hardware underneath with common software interfaces.
"A combination of new developments, such as OpenCL, which is a unifying language, enables us to deliver a step change in exploiting system performance for enterprises." said Dairsie Latimer, Petapath's CTO. "The impact is not just one of increased productivity and return on investment, but also much greater future proofing of datacentres."
Any company interested in this area is invited to contribute to the research through Harasimiuk.
Nick Flaherty has been covering technology and startups since 1990 and is based in Bristol, where he co-founded the SiliconSouthWest network. During that time he has worked for most of the electronics magazines and newspapers in the UK and several in Europe and the US, covering all areas of the industry. He blogs at The Embedded blog www.embeddedblog.blogspot.com and Portable Multimedia www.portablemultimedia.blogspot.com and at www.flaherty.co.uk.
"Consulting is a means to an end - we are not a consulting business," he said. "We are also not a cluster builder, we are turning into a software company providing software and tools that help optimise existing infrastructure, with performance analysis and with performance prediction."
One area that is helping this is the emergence of OpenCL, a specification from the Kronos group like OpenGL and OpenES that allows software to be agnostic to the hardware underneath with common software interfaces.
"A combination of new developments, such as OpenCL, which is a unifying language, enables us to deliver a step change in exploiting system performance for enterprises." said Dairsie Latimer, Petapath's CTO. "The impact is not just one of increased productivity and return on investment, but also much greater future proofing of datacentres."
Any company interested in this area is invited to contribute to the research through Harasimiuk.
Nick Flaherty has been covering technology and startups since 1990 and is based in Bristol, where he co-founded the SiliconSouthWest network. During that time he has worked for most of the electronics magazines and newspapers in the UK and several in Europe and the US, covering all areas of the industry. He blogs at The Embedded blog www.embeddedblog.blogspot.com and Portable Multimedia www.portablemultimedia.blogspot.com and at www.flaherty.co.uk.
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