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A few pieces of news crossed my way recently. First, AMD has released the x86 Open64 Compiler Suite (binary and source). This is a free as in beer and in speech compiler suite that is the basis for the PathScale Compiler. AMD also provides a collection of libraries and HPC applications that can be built with the compiler (instructions on how to build the packages are provided.)

While we are talking about compilers. I also found a nice bullet point overview of OpenCL (pdf). If you recall OpenCL is a new language that is designed to be portable across GPU and CPU architectures. It even has a simple FFT example. As I have said in the past, things like CUDA, OpenCL, and BrookGPU are nice, but they don't cover the cluster computing model. And, it is step in the right direction.

Finally, here are two papers (pdf) that discuss using the cloud for HPC. They even include benchmarks! Take a look at Benchmarking Amazon EC2 for High-performance Scientific Computing and Can Cloud Computing Reach The TOP500?. Don't sell your cluster just yet.