Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2020
From insideHPC
2020 HiPEAC Conference to Showcase European Computing Technologies
The 2020 HiPEAC conference will kick off next week in Bologna to showcase the innovative made-in-Europe technologies driving computing systems from the edge to the cloud. This year, the conference will dive into radical new developments…
From insideHPC
Call for Abstracts: 19th Workshop on High Performance Computing in Meteorology
The 19th Workshop on High Performance Computing in Meteorology has issued its Call for Abstracts. With a theme entitled "Towards Exascale Computing in Numerical Weather Prediction, the event takes place September 14-18 in Bologna…
From Schneier on Security
5G Security
The security risks inherent in Chinese-made 5G networking equipment are easy to understand. Because the companies that make the equipment are subservient to the Chinese government, they could be forced to include backdoors in…
From insideHPC
Spanish Supercomputing Network serves up record computing hours for Science
The Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES) closed the year 2019 with a record in the number of processor hours allocated to Spanish researchers in different areas of knowledge such as: Astronomy, Space and Earth Sciences, Biomedicine…
From Computational Complexity
What would you do if you showed P=NP? I would reread Factor Man by Matt Ginsberg
Lance has often said (and also in this) that if P=NP that would be great for the world: much more efficient ways to build things, science could be done better, etc, and that is much more important than that modern crypto would…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
ACM-W Connections–January 2020
Welcome from the ACM-W Chair ACM-W is kicking off 2020 with lots of exciting news! It with great pleasure that I announce the official establishment of ACM-W Asia-Pacific. Following a successful workshop in Chengdu, China last…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
ACM Celebrations in North America
er the last two months, three Celebrations were held in three countries of North America reaching over 1,000 students!
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
ACM-W Rising Star Award Recipient: Vivienne Sze
ACM-W would like to announce Dr. Vivienne Sze as the winner of the inaugural ACM-W Rising Star Award.
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
The First ACM-W Professional Chapter in Turkey: ACM-W Ankara
As the first professional ACM-W chapter established in Turkey, ACM-W Ankara will organize events and also act as an umbrella organization for the existing ACM and ACM-W student chapters in the country.
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Elena Ferrari and Wendy Mackay awarded ACM Fellowship
In December 2019, Prof. Elena Ferrari (University of Insubria) and Prof. Wendy Mackay (Inria -Saclay) were awarded ACM Fellowships, the two women from Europe to be recognised as ACM fellows.
From insideHPC
Podcast: Will the ExaSky Project be First to Reach Exascale?
In this Lets Talk Exascale podcast, Katrin Heitmann from Argonne describes how the ExaSky project may be one of the first applications to reach exascale levels of performance. "Our current challenge problem is designed to run…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Next Generation Smart Contracts
Some introductory information about smart contracts
See also Ricardian Contracts: "... a method of recording a document as a contract at law, and linking it securely to other systems, such as accounting, for the contract as …
From BLOG@CACM
The Internet at 50
A personalized take on three things we have to celebrate about the Internet today.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Having Fun With Computer Science
There is no question that there are a lot of ways to have fun with computer science. Some of them are inexpensive. Some of them cost a lot of money. You can do a lot for a little bit of money. But some interesting things cost…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing Planet Formation at SDSC
Researchers are using a novel approach to solving the mysteries of planet formation with the help of the Comet supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center on the UC San Diego campus. The modeling enabled scientists at…
From insideHPC
TMGcore teams with FSG as Certified OTTO Ready Electrical Contractor
Today TMGcore announced that Facility Solutions Group (FSG) will be the first OTTO-Ready Electrical Contractor. OTTO is a line of highly efficient, high density, modular two-phase immersion cooled data center platforms with a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
5G Tests Underwhelm
Some interesting first views of 5G. As in most cases a 'killer app' experience is needed to sell the increased cost of hardware quickly, but it will sell as a natural update.
5G Underwhelms in Its First Big Test By The Wall…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Humanizing Assistants a kind of Privacy Invasion?
From a retail perspective, with further expert comment.
Does humanizing virtual assistants undermine consumer privacy? by Tom Ryan in Retailwire
A university study finds people increasingly attributing lifelike qualities to
“These…
From insideHPC
Call for Papers: MSST 2020 Mass Storage Conference in Santa Clara
The MSST 2020 Mass Storage Conference has issued its Call for Papers. The event will be held May 4-8, 2020 at Santa Clara University, with the Research Track taking place May 7 and 8. "The conference focuses on current challenges…
From insideHPC
Video: The Parallel Computing Revolution Is Only Half Over
In this video from ATPESC 2019, Rob Schreiber from Cerebras Systems looks back at historical computing advancements, Moore's Law, and what happens next. "A recent report by OpenAI showed that, between 2012 and 2018, the compute…
From Schneier on Security
Artificial Personas and Public Discourse
Presidential-campaign season is officially, officially, upon us now, which means it's time to confront the weird and insidious ways in which technology is warping politics. One of the biggest threats on the horizon: Artificial…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart Going More Robotic
Note in particular the emphasis on out of stocks.
Walmart Expands Its Robotic Workforce to 650 Additional Stores
Shelf-scanning devices aim to help reduce out-of-stock items that collectively cost retailers a trillion dollars a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sharing with a Core Scientific Data Model
With data getting more complex, and havig to include many aspects of context-specific metadata, sharing it efficiently can be messy. In our experience the integration of needed metadata can be problematic.
Simplifying How Scientists…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Improving AI via Deep Learning and Process
Thoughts on how machine learning will improve. I agree that in particular hybrid models that bring in process logic, extensions of RPA methods, and simulation models of the 'twin' form will also become more important.
Deep…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Project Loon
Was recently reminded of Google's project to deliver internet access to remote Earth locations. Proposed as early as 2008. Now spun off, but still active. Consider the opportunity to provide engaging capabilities and intelligence…
From insideHPC
Atos Supercomputer to enhance weather forecasting at ECMWF
Today Atos announced an €80 million contract with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to supply its for a BullSequana XH2000 supercomputer. As one of the most powerful meteorological supercomputers
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Leadership for Reskilling, Relearning
Been a long time proponent of continuous learning and re-skilling aimed at continuously changing tech and goals. This blog is one aspect of that effort. Below McKinsey podcast talks about the need and efforts involved, as
Redefining…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Our Thoughts on P=NP
The Clay prize anniversary is soon. SME keynote lecture source Evelyn Lamb is a mathematician who is also a journalist. She has a blog called Roots of Unity on the Scientific American blog network. Also impressive is that she…
From insideHPC
Los Alamos National Laboratory joins IBM Q Network for quantum computing
Today Los Alamos National Laboratory announced that it is joining the cloud-based IBM Q Network as part of the Laboratory’s research initiative into quantum computing, including developing quantum computing algorithms, conducting…
From insideHPC
NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD: Instant Infrastructure for AI Leadership
Darrin Johnson from NVIDIA gave this talk at the DDN User Group. "The NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD is a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputing infrastructure that delivers groundbreaking performance, deploys in
…