Community is a popular word. It suggests people working together to achieve a common goal. As anyone can tell you, open communication is one aspect of community that is essential for success. As a registred user of HPC Community, you are recieving the premier issue of the new HPC Community Newsletter. Scheduled for monthly distribution, the HPC Community Newsletter will provide a snapshot of community discussions, articles, and news. It is designed to support communication within our community.

The HPC community has long history of open collaboration. Many readers may be surprised to learn that a large part of the current High Performance Computing (HPC) market actually grew from a small community of scientists and engineers whose common goal was low cost/user directed commodity-based computing. They shared a common need and worked together to achieve a common goal. The end result is today's low cost/open commodity-based HPC cluster computing.

This community model is actually quite remarkable. At its core, the community brings together a diverse group of people from various competing companies (IBM, Dell, HP, Platform), within various disciplines (sciences, manufacturing, government labs, etc), in various countries, all of whom have a huge range of needs (small 8-core cluster to those at the top of the Top500 list). If you tried to build this type of infrastructure under the umbrella of one particular company, discipline, or country, you would have a difficult time! Of course, there are many dynamics at play, but communities flourish and grow on similarities and not differences.

What makes all this possible? There are many factors that foster the growth of the HPC community. First and foremost, is open software. Virtually all of the critical software is freely available (free as in beer, no cost) and open source (free as in speech, you can modify the software if you like). The "openness" allows users to talk and collaborate on all aspects of the software without concerns for Intellectual Property (IP) issues (i.e. no lawyers required). Secondly, there are low or no "entrance fees." Due to the low cost of x86 hardware, users may "try" things without a huge financial commitment. Thirdly, the role of the Internet cannot be understated. By allowing worldwide collaboration, the Internet connected many of those with common interests and facilitated community-wide problem solving. There are other influences, but these are the most important.

The tools of collaboration are websites, mailing lists, and code repositories. These are where community members "meet" one another to discuss and advance their community. The role of these resources may vary, but they all serve as touchstones for the entire community.

HPC Community is a true touchstone. It serves as a meeting place for those interested in HPC clustering. In addition to hosting software projects (Kusu, Lava, and others), there are discussion forums, blogs, sub-communities, and technical articles. In the coming months, you will be seeing much more content and other activities at HPC Community. In particular, we have launched this monthly Newsletter which will update you on all the latest and greatest activities at HPC Community. As a registered member of HPC Community you will receive the newsletter each month. (Opting out is available on your Member Page, but why would you?). The newsletter will be about the community and created by the community. It is not a promotional newsletter and will not be used as a medium to promote or sell products. From time to time there may be discussions about using, integrating, or evaluating commercial products, but these are certainly within the community goals.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the HPC community is you. Your questions, comments, experiences, and insights, are what make the community work. So please, join us and enjoy the newsletter. We are here to support you.

Douglas Eadline
HPC Community Guy
HPC Community