Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2016
From insideHPC
InfiniBand Enables Intelligent Networks
"The path to Exascale computing is clearly paved with Co-Design architecture. By using a Co-Design approach, the network infrastructure becomes more intelligent, which reduces the overhead on the CPU and streamlines the process…
From insideHPC
Python for HPC
Python is a commonly used language within the overall computer industry. Python is an easy to use and elegant scripting language which had gained some popularity in the HPC industry. With the evolution of heterogeneous computing…
From insideHPC
New Paper Surveys Approximate Computing Techniques
A new paper from ORNL's Sparsh Mittal presents a survey of approximate computing techniques. Recently published in ACM Computing Surveys 2016, A Survey Of Techniques for Approximate Computing reviews nearly 85 papers on this …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Innovation in CPG
Interview with my colleague Wayne Fisher" ... For more than 25 years, Wayne Fisher worked for Procter & Gamble in a variety of Corporate R&D and Business Unit roles. He was an Upstream Product Development Manager, an Innovation…
From insideHPC
Survey Shows DDN as HPC Storage Market Leader
Today DDN announced that it fortified its position as the HPC storage market leader during 2015. According to a recently published Intersect360 Research HPC User Site Census report, DDN has largest share of installed systems …
From insideHPC
Deep Learning, Ocean Modeling, and HPCG Come to ASC16 Student Supercomputer Challenge
Today the ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC16) announced details from their Preliminary Contest on January 6. College students from around the world were asked to design a high performance computer system that optimizes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Strategy vs Execution
Short, interesting piece in the HBR, by Roger L. Martin: " .... In a recent article, Paul Leinwand, Cesare Mainardi, and Art Kleiner presented some survey findings underscoring the well-established fact that few leaders (only…
From insideHPC
Call for Papers: ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers
The 2016 ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers has issued its Call for Papers. The event takes place May 16-18 in Como, Italy. "We seek contributions that push the envelope in a wide range of computing topics, …
From Schneier on Security
The Internet of Things that Talks About You Behind Your Back
SilverPush is an Indian startup that's trying to figure out all the different computing devices you own. It embeds inaudible sounds into the webpages you read and the television commercials you watch. Software secretly embedded…
From The Eponymous Pickle
January February Analytics Magazine
" ... The cover story of the January/February issue of Analytics focuses on the relatively new management method of big data, it is all about what’s driving all the excitement concerning data lakes. But dive and swim at yourAnalytics…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Did Euclid Really Mean ‘Random’?
Euclid writes randomness into his Elements Cropped from source (Garrett Coakley) Euclid is, of course, the Greek mathematician, who is often referred to as the “Father of Geometry.” Today Ken and I want to talk about an “error”…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Source GO Language in IBM Mainframes
IBM hopes that Google's language, already in use by Docker and Kubernates, will stretch the open source ecosystem for its mainframes ... Google's Go, considered an up-and-coming language with usage in projects like Docker and…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The Cray supercomputer, the iPhone and blood
When I was in high school, the most powerful computer money could buy was the Cray 2. The thing would require a room all by itself. I don’t know how much it sold for, but an old MIT article says that it cost $140 per central-processing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Media Analysis Using Watson Analytics
Saw a presentation today of the use of Watson Analytics using Twitter data. Using the recent Golden Globes presentation as an example. This comes from the collaboration between Twitter and IBM . This demonstrates the use of…
From Schneier on Security
Michael Hayden and the Dutch Government Are against Crypto Backdoors
Last week, former NSA Director Michael Hayden made a very strong argument against deliberately weakening security products by adding backdoors: Americans' safety is best served by the highest level of technology possible, and…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
CSTA Board of Directors Election (part 2)
As a follow-up to the reminder about the CSTA Board of Directors election, here are some notes from the Nominations & Elections Committee. We apologize if any candidates have had trouble submitting applications or experienced…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of January 11
Monday, January 11, 2016 House Floor: H.R. 653, FOIA Act The bill would require making requested information available in an electronic, publicly accessible format and the creation of a centralized portal for FOIA requests. Status…
From insideHPC
K Computer Runs World’s Largest-Scale Magnetic-Reversal Simulator
Today Fujitsu Limited announced it has developed the world's largest magnetic-reversal simulator. Developed in joint research with the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), the simulator runs on the famous K computer…
From insideHPC
Brookhaven Lab Expands Computational Science Initiative
Today the Brookhaven National Laboratory announced that it has expanded its Computational Science Initiative (CSI). The programs within this initiative leverage computational science, computer science, and mathematics expertise…
From insideHPC
NOAA Upgrades Supercomputers to 5.78 Petaflops
Today NOAA reported a nearly four-fold increase in computing capacity to innovate U.S. forecasting in 2016. NOAA’s Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputer System is now running at record speed, with the capacity to process…
From insideHPC
Zadara Storage-as-a-Service comes to PCPC Direct
Today Zadara Storage announced that PCPC Direct has added the Zadara Storage Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) solution to their product portfolio to provide enterprise-grade storage-as-a-service to their HPC customers in …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Brand Virtual Reality
In VentureBeat: Big brands such as Coca-Cola, Nissan and HBO have been dabbling with virtual reality experiences, with some calling it the final frontier. Virtual reality could solve some of advertising's biggest issues, such…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Ethics of People and Machines
Via CACM: Cambridge University looks at AI ethics in the interaction of people and machines.The future of intelligence: Cambridge University launches new centre to study AI and the future of humanity ... The University of Cambridge…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Who Owns the Data?
In CIO Today: Who owns the IOT data? Key legal challenge, with likely considerable differences globally. Also a big part of understanding data as an asset.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Reminder- Nominations Sought for New CCC Council Members!
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is charged with catalyzing and empowering the U.S. computing research community to articulate and advance major research directions for the field. To do so, the CCC needs truly visionary…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Experience Pays Off
It’s that time of semester again - Final project time for my semester courses. Students are working on their big projects and running into difficulties. Projects are great learning experiences for students and making mistakes…
From insideHPC
Faster SAS Analytics Using DDN Storage Solutions
Parallel file systems have become the norm for HPC environments. While typically used in high end simulations, these parallel file systems can greatly affect the performance and thus the customer experience when using analytics…
From insideHPC
FlyElephant Announces New Tools for Scientific Computing Data Management
Today FlyElephant announced new tools, a series of webinars, and the formation of a community around the platform. FlyElephant is a platform that provides scientists with computing infrastructure for calculation and automates…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Darker Side of Chatbots
Good to see this evolving direction, and the comment below is interesting. Having looked at and compared NL interfaces from a number of chatbot perspectives, while the measurement may be hard, you do know when you are notIn…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Engineers to get the Data Ready
Astronomer.io Brought to my attention" ... With the explosion of big data, the data scientist has become a game-changer in big companies. And a new, crucial supporting role has emerged: the data engineer.The data engineer's…