Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2018
From The Eponymous Pickle
Integrating Agent Models with Process Models
In a conversation on modeling today the topic of 'Agent Based Modeling (ABM)' came up. And it had come to mind that such ABM models could also be usefully integrated with process models. The ABM modeling the architecture…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Learning from Failure
Think also, the After Action Review (AAR):
How Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Amazon Learn from Failure By Bill Taylor
Why, all of a sudden, are so many successful business leaders urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Spoofing Voice to Text
Caution for towards a need for better Assistant security.
AI learns how to fool speech-to-text. That’s bad news for voice assistants by Tristan Greene in Nextweb
A pair of computer scientists at the University of California,
Actual…
From insideHPC
FutureLearn Offers Free Course on HPC in the Cloud
Today the CloudLightning project announced a free open online course on High Performance Computing in the Cloud. "Developed in collaboration with the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce (IC4) and Dublin City University…
From insideHPC
NEC Deploys Sator Supercomputer at ONERA in France
NEC has deployed a new supercomputer at the ONERA center in France to power aerospace research. Called SATOR, the 667 Teraflop machine features Intel Broadwell E5-2680v4 processors and the Intel Omni-Path interconnect. "According…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Connecting Computing Research with National Priorities
For weeks we have been looking been recapping the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Symposium from the perspective of the researchers and industry representatives who presented their work on each panel. This week, we are getting…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Initializing arrays quickly in Swift: be wary of Sadun’s initializers
Swift is Apple’s go-to programming language. It is the new default to build applications for iPhones. It also runs well on Linux. It is not as low-level as C or C++, but it has characteristics that I like. For example, it does…
From insideHPC
CesgaHack GPU Hackathon Returns to Spain in March
The Galicia Supercomputing Center (CESGA) and Appentra Solutions will host a GPU Hackathon March 5-9 in Santiago de Compostela. "CesgaHack18 aims to help scientists and developers accelerate the execution of their scientific
…
From insideHPC
High Performance Inferencing with TensorRT
Chris Gottbrath from NVIDIA gave this talk at SC17 in Denver. "This talk will introduce the TensorRT Programmable Inference Accelerator which enables high throughput and low latency inference on clusters with NVIDIA V100, P100…
From insideHPC
Successfully Managing Workload Convergence in Your Data Center
Modern enterprises are being challenged to implement new technologies and produce results faster without increasing their IT budgets. This is the first in an insideHPC Special Report series. This post explores new resource management…
From Schneier on Security
New Malware Hijacks Cryptocurrency Mining
This is a clever attack. After gaining control of the coin-mining software, the malware replaces the wallet address the computer owner uses to collect newly minted currency with an address controlled by the attacker. From then…
From XRDS
What Are Precision and Recall and Why Are They Needed in Search Engines?
In this post, I am going to talk about precision and recall and their importance in information retrieval. First of all, let’s talk about what we mean by information retrieval. Suppose you wake up one morning and decide you want…
From Schneier on Security
Skygofree: New Government Malware for Android
Kaspersky Labs is reporting on a new piece of sophisticated malware: We observed many web landing pages that mimic the sites of mobile operators and which are used to spread the Android implants. These domains have been registered…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Drone Swarms Don't Need a Break
Powerful, yet also scary scenario. At least now they run out of power. Note the solution here is in the process of using a swarm this way by collaborating. The realm of our original research.
Energy Neutral Drone Swarms …
From insideHPC
Apply Now for the Summer of HPC in Edinburgh
Applications are now open for the PRACE Summer of HPC 2018. The Summer of HPC is a PRACE outreach and training program that offers summer placements at top HPC centers across Europe to late-stage undergraduates and early-stage…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing New Risk Variants for T-2 Diabetes
Reanalysis of public genetic data using innovative computational methods has allowed the identification of new genetic markers associated with an increased risk to develop Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). "The study, led by Barcelona Supercomputing…
From insideHPC
Atos to Deploy 12 Petaflop Supercomputer at Jülich in Germany
Today Atos announced has a contract to deliver its a 12 Petaflop supercomputer to Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany. The BullSequana X1000 machine will be Germany’s fastest supercomputer and one the most powerful computers
…
From insideHPC
Radio Free Looks at the Cryptocurrency Crash
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the recent cryptocurrency crash and why prices for these coins is so volatile. After that, we do our Catch of the Week, where the IBM Cloud is leading the company back to profitability…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI and Auto Companies
Further, Considering automotive as a channel for goods and services
Artificial intelligence as auto companies’ new engine of value
What opportunities does AI open up for mobility, and how can OEMs capture them in the short and …
From insideHPC
Video: D-Wave Systems Seminar on Quantum Computing from SC17
In this video from SC17 in Denver, Bo Ewald from D-Wave Systems hosts a Quantum Computing Seminar. "We will discuss quantum computing, the D-Wave 2000Q system and software, the growing software ecosystem, an overview of some
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Dash Buttons
Recently sent to me, an announcement that Amazon dash buttons were going 'virtual', and have been for some time. And I was sent virtual buttons for a number of things that I had ordered in the past. Not quite the same thing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cheaper Chrome
Was reminded once again of the $100 laptop push of a decade ago that is aimed at schools. Chrome Laptops are a natural next step, with much of the function needed for productivity online. And, of course, Microsoft plans to…
From Schneier on Security
Dark Caracal: Global Espionage Malware from Lebanon
The EFF and Lookout are reporting on a new piece of spyware operating out of Lebanon. It primarily targets mobile devices compromised by fake secure messaging clients like Signal and WhatsApp. From the Lookout announcement: Dark…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fake News Detection with AI?
We connected with Enterra a few years ago about supply chain AI. Saw their ideas presented by Stephen DeAngelis , which were impressive for the application . See my tags on Enterra. Now some of their work on 'Fake News' detection…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Supervised, Unsupervised and Reinforcement Learning
Nicely done piece, relatively non technical, with comparison of approaches and visualizations.
Machine Learning Explained: Understanding Supervised, Unsupervised, and Reinforcement Learning - Data Science Central by Ronald Van…
From insideHPC
Consumer GPUs Power 2 Petaflop Deep Learning Cluster at ASTRON
Today ClusterVision announced the successful deployment of a new high performance computing GPU cluster system for the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON). "By utilizing the deep learning capabilities of the GPU…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Go Opening to Public
Don't plan to get to this anytime soon, but continue to follow automatic sensing and payment systems in detail here. Would like to better understand the behavioral details of the interaction. An outcome of our lab's experiments…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Challenges for AI Redesigning Healthcare
Six Challenges To Tackle Before Artificial Intelligence Redesigns Healthcare in Medical Futurist
The potential of artificial intelligence for making healthcare better is indisputable. The question is how to integrate it successfully…
From insideHPC
Building a GPU-enabled and Performance-portable Global Cloud-resolving Atmospheric Model
Richard Loft from NCAR gave this talk at the NVIDIA booth at SC17. "The objectives of NCAR's exploration of accelerator architectures for high performance computing in recent years has been to 1) speed up the rate of code optimization…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Microbenchmarking is hard: virtual machine edition
To better understand software performance, we often use small controlled experiments called microbenchmarks. In an earlier post, I remarked that it is hard to reason from a Java benchmark. This brought me some criticism fromContinue…