ISC Day 1

Don't you remember the days when you had partners, customers and business friends that you actually liked? Ok, so I admit....I really, really like some of the partners I work with here at AMD.

Trains in Germany are interesting. The schedules are pretty easy if you speak german, complicated if you speak english. I ended up in Stuttgart and then went backwards to Heidelberg.

I met with the folks from the OpenIB group at an event they were hosting this evening. I forgot that in the HPC world, the IB folks and techies can get away with their jeans and polo's.....I was a good boy and wore my "business atire" (unfortunatly that means I was slightly cooler than a steamed lobster by the end of the night).

The OpenIB folks pitched the idea that AMD should join their group because we are "ecosystem" partners to the IB industry. What they really want is a "small" sum of money and the use of our labs for testing. This is something I think we can accomplish quite easily but hey....this is quirky territory so who knows.

Whats funny is that the OpenIB guys finally "got it". Instead of everyone using their own "IB" stack...they should combine it all into one good stack and offer it to customers. That makes it interchangeable and much easier to deal with. I only wonder how you combine 5 products into one, and then keep the value each of those companies added.....but maybe someone will tell me.

I had a great meetings with my other favorite partner folks (Voltaire, Infinicon, Panasas and now Pathscale). I also got to spend a few minutes with the HPC product manager for Microsoft.

Tonight is a short night, I have early meetings and a full day of "stuff" including my flight back to London. Funny story but every time I come over here, I end up having to promise to come back.....hmm...