Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2017
From Computational Complexity
60 years of Eric and Mike
As I checked in at the Holiday Inn in New Brunswick Wednesday night, they asked me if I had stayed there before. I said it has been a while and they looked in their computer: October 2007. I was last at DIMACS for the Workshop…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Q&A on PowerAI
For research I took a look at the PowerAI offering. See the complete article:
Putting the “AI” in PowerAI
A Q&A with IBM Research’s Hillery Hunter
IBM’s latest Power servers come with an AI twist. Optimized for deep learning, a…
From Schneier on Security
Duress Codes for Fingerprint Access Control
Mike Specter has an interesting idea on how to make biometric access-control systems more secure: add a duress code. For example, you might configure your iPhone so that either thumb or forefinger unlocks the device, but your…
From insideHPC
IBM Adds TensorFlow Support for PowerAI Deep Learning
Today IBM announced that its PowerAI distribution for popular open source Machine Learning and Deep Learning frameworks on the POWER8 architecture now supports the TensorFlow 0.12 framework that was originally created by Google…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tensorflow and PowerAI
Great to see integration of key AI software, lets also start to see excellent examples of their use with supporting data architecture.
IBM brings Google's AI tools to its Power hardware
IBM is integrating the open-souce TensorFlow…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Talk on Technology Trends
William Chamberlin from IBM Market Development and Insights, presented "IT Technology Trends in 2017... and Beyond." Slides. Talk.
Use the discussion group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Cognitive-Systems-Institute-6729452…
From insideHPC
Video: Introduction to the Cheyenne Supercomputer
Cheyenne is a new 5.34-petaflops, high-performance computer built for NCAR by SGI. Cheyenne be a critical tool for researchers across the country studying climate change, severe weather, geomagnetic storms, seismic activity,
…
From insideHPC
CUDA Made Easy: An Introduction
"CUDA C++ is just one of the ways you can create massively parallel applications with CUDA. It lets you use the powerful C++ programming language to develop high performance algorithms accelerated by thousands of parallel threads…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Supercomputing Cancer Research and the Human Brain
In this WUOT podcast, Jack Wells from ORNL describes how the Titan supercomputer helps advance science. "The world’s third-most powerful supercomputer is located in Oak Ridge, and though it bears the imposing name TITAN, its
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Update on D-Wave
Been following, sometime interacting with D-Wave for some time, a relatively optimistic update in Nature. Controversy remains.
D-Wave upgrade: How scientists are using the world’s most controversial quantum computer
Scepticism…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Digital Whiteboards
Over the hears have met with a number of companies aiming to make meetings more effective, and attended many meetings. Have yet to see it well done. Usually the process used itself is not effective. Most often now, its taking…
From insideHPC
Achieving High-Performance Math Processing with Intel MKL 2017
"Many of the libraries developed in the 70s and 80s for core linear algebra and scientific math computation, such as BLAS, LAPACK, FFT, are still in use today with C, C++, Fortran, and even Python programs. With MKL, Intel has…
From Schneier on Security
Security Risks of the President's Android Phone
Reports are that President Trump is still using his old Android phone. There are security risks here, but they are not the obvious ones. I'm not concerned about the data. Anything he reads on that screen is coming from the insecure…
From Putting People First
New toolkit to create digital government services
The UK’s Government Digital Service has launched a service toolkit that aims to be a one stop shop for service design resources (reports PublicTechnology). The toolkit is a single page on GOV.UK that provides links to all the…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
How to Check a Proof
What to do about claims of hard theorems? Cropped from source Shinichi Mochizuki has claimed the famous ABC conjecture since 2012. It is still unclear whether or not the claimed proof is correct. We covered it then and have mentioned…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pulse Response Biometrics
Had never heard of this biometric, but as a student of 'biometrics' was intrigued. No idea how unique such a signature is. Article is non technical.
Authentication Using Pulse-Response Biometrics
By Ivan Martinovic, Kasper Rasmussen…
From insideHPC
Apply Now for 2017 International Summer School on HPC Challenges
Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from institutions in Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States are invited to apply for the eighth International Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences, to be held…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Year of the Virtual Assistant
In NASDAQ.com
Why 2017 Will Be the Year of the Virtual Assistant
January 24, 2017, by Danny Vena, Motley Fool
In its annual mobile apps survey, Research firm Gartner predicted that by 2019 virtual assistants will account for 20…
From insideHPC
Russian RSC Group Becomes Elite Intel Lustre Reseller
Today RSC Group from Russia announced that the company has achieved highest Elite status in the Intel Solutions for Lustre Reseller Program. Only 9 Intel partners in Europe currently have this status.
The post Russian RSC Group…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Computer Science Education at SxSWEdu 2017
SxSWedu is one big conference I have never been to. Seeing how it is tied to the big South By SouthWest Interactive and Music conferences it has always fascinated me though. Attending doesn’t easily fit with my travel budgetcomputer…
From insideHPC
Scaling HPC at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre
In this special guest feature, Tim Gillett from Scientific Computing World interviews Norbert Attig and Thomas Eickermann from the Jülich Supercomputing Centre about how JSC is tackling high performance computing challenges.
…From insideHPC
INRIA to Host Workshop on HPC Roadmap for Energy Industry
The HPC for Energy (HPC4E) project is organizing a workshop entitled HPC Roadmap for Energy Industry. Hosted by INRIA, the event takes place Feb 1 at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation. "Energy…
From insideHPC
Former SGI’s CEO Jorge Titinger Joins TransparentBusiness as Chief Strategy Officer
Today TransparentBusiness announced the appointment of Jorge Luis Titinger as its Chief Strategy Officer. Mr. Titinger is best known as the former CEO of SGI, a global leader in HPC, which was recently acquired by Hewlett Packard…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sewing Robots
Moat interesting direction, change the materials to conform to the robotics. I recall seeing some of the same videos which showed how human-complex sewing is.
It was pointed out to me that the precise alignment of the placement…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Google VR
Good Wired piece on how Google is looking at VR, where the user becomes the interface. The Inside Story of Google's Daydream, where VR feels at home ... "
From Schneier on Security
Capturing Pattern-Lock Authentication
Interesting research -- "Cracking Android Pattern Lock in Five Attempts": Abstract: Pattern lock is widely used as a mechanism for authentication and authorization on Android devices. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel video…
From Putting People First
[OECD Report] Use of Behavioural Insights in Consumer Policy
Use of Behavioural Insights in Consumer Policy OECD 20 Jan 2017 48 pages Over the past decade, behavioural insights have helped make consumer policies more evidence-based and effective. This report examines how behavioural insights…
From The Eponymous Pickle
CSI Talk: IT Technology Trends in 2017
From the CSI Group:
" .... This a reminder about our Cognitive Systems Institute Speaker Series on Thursday, January 26, 2016 at 10:30 am ET US (7:30 am PT). Our speaker is William Chamberlin from IBM Market Development and,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Packaging and the Internet of Things
Packaging was always been an interest of our innovation group. Elements of integrating packaging and the net have been talked for a long time. It is starting to happen in interesting ways. In Adage:
Packaging Deals Bring Internet…
From insideHPC
Video: Stunning Simulation from Blue Brain Project at SC16
In this silent video from the Blue Brain Project at SC16, 865 segments from a rodent brain are simulated with isosurfaces generated from Allen Brain Atlas image stacks. For this INCITE project, researchers from École Polytechnique…