Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2015
From The Eponymous Pickle
Thinking Humans in the Computing Loop
An idea we played with for years. Why not integrate humans deeply into processes that need judgement and intelligence? Even if only temporarily until we figure our how to do it otherwise. The question is how do we closely…
From insideHPC
Berkeley Lab to Optimize Spark for HPC
Today LBNL announced that a team of scientists from Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division has been awarded a grant by Intel to support their goal of enabling data analytics software stacks—notably Spark—to scale out …
From insideHPC
Podcast: SC15 Keynote Speaker Alan Alda on How HPC Transforms
"To model climate change is one of the great benefits we're going to get from supercomputing. The trouble is, to really help the public understand all the benefits that they can get from supercomputing, it has to be communicated…
From insideHPC
Seagate Launches Government Solutions Group
Today Seagate announced the formation of Seagate Government Solutions, a new U.S.-based business entity dedicated to helping address the growing data-management needs of government agencies.
The post Seagate Launches Government…From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Machines Evolving with us
Interesting thoughtful piece suggesting that our intelligence is co-evolving with AI. As a practical student of the emergence of AI, I agree that it is harder than think we know. In Nautilus:When it comes to artificial intelligence…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How IOT is already being Used
Fairly obvious, but it is worth reviewing, with statistics. In the HBR: " .... We did an open-source analysis of IoT user behavior, looking at 1,000 IoT technology platforms and services and more than 279,000 early adopter…
From insideHPC
CEA in France Upgrades Storage to DDN SFA14KE
Today DDN announced that the French CEA has selected DDN’s SFA14KE as the core storage for this year’s comprehensive refresh of the agency's data management infrastructure, “GS1K”.
The post CEA in France Upgrades Storage to DDN…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
How do you terrify computer science students?
How do you terrify computer science students? Ask them to design their own project to be graded. I asked my programming students today to come up with a project involving reading and writing files for them to create and me to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Death of Gene Amdahl, IBM Architect and then Competitor
Our enterprise was one of the first users of his competitive mainframe environment, when there was little large scale competition. Was interesting to see the background of Amdahl and how he became a competitor. He also hadIn…
From insideHPC
TACC to Provide Onramp for Project Catapult Reconfigurable Fabric Platform
Today TACC announced it will enable users to take advantage of the capabilities of Microsoft's Project Catapult reconfigurable fabric platform. Project Catapult is expected to improve the speed and efficiency of science and engineering…
From insideHPC
Industries that Use Cloud Computing for HPC Applications
Various industries have adopted or are in the planning and evaluation phase for using the cloud for HPC applications. Within the realm of technical computing, certain workloads are suited to a cloud-based HPC environment. Workloads…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Adding Interest Via Data
One of the lessons that stuck with my from some workshops I took some years ago was that more interesting projects involved doing things that involve a lot of data. Doing something once can often be done manually more easily …
From Schneier on Security
Personal Data Sharing by Mobile Apps
Interesting research: "Who Knows What About Me? A Survey of Behind the Scenes Personal Data Sharing to Third Parties by Mobile Apps," by Jinyan Zang, Krysta Dummit, James Graves, Paul Lisker, and Latanya Sweeney. We tested 110…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tailored Analytics: Wolfram Financial Platform
More movement towards tailored analytics. Here the Wolfram Financial Platform. Obvious inclusion of methods like time series analysis. Consider tailored tools vs automated tools. Also note the inclusion of workflows. Business…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Swarms of Drones
Swarms have been covered here a number of times. Some additional applications immediately come to mind beyond warehouse inventory. Being tested now.
From Schneier on Security
Testing the Usability of PGP Encryption Tools
"Why Johnny Still, Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client," by Scott Ruoti, Jeff Andersen, Daniel Zappala, and Kent Seamons. Abstract: This paper presents the results of a laboratory study involving…
From insideHPC
New Math Libraries Speed 64-bit ARM-based HPC Systems
Today ARM announced new math libraries that are precision-tuned for 64-bit ARMv8-A processors. Designed for ARM-based HPC servers, ARM Performance Libraries are foundational math routines designed to enable the maximum performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Games and Cognition
Simon Ellis, a PhD student from RPI, presented "Aleph, A Cognitive Game-playing System for Tabletop Games." Slides. With comparison to Watson.Please find the schedule of presenters here for the next several calls and please…
From insideHPC
Atos Launches Bull sequana X1000 Supercomputer
Today Atos launched the Bull sequana X1000, its new family of supercomputers on the company's road to exascale. "The new Bull sequana system, powered by future Intel Xeon processors and the Intel Xeon Phi processor, code-named…
From insideHPC
Linux Foundation Announces OpenHPC Collaborative Project
Today the Linux Foundation announced plans to form the OpenHPC Collaborative Project. This project will provide a new, open source framework to support the world's most sophisticated HPC environments. "The use of open source …
From The Eponymous Pickle
SailFish Exchange for Data Curation
A clever idea. A Pinterest for data. Approach to data democratization. From Booz Allen Hamilton .Sailfish™ ExchangeSocially Charged Data CurationSailfish Exchange simplifies the data curation process. Using a social community…
From Putting People First
Open call for social impact business ideas and start-ups in Italy
Rinascimenti Sociali [“Social Renaissances”], the first accelerator of social knowledge and entrepreneurship in Italy, launches Foundamenta, a call exclusively dedicated to new business ideas and start-ups generating social impact…
From Putting People First
Open call for social impact business ideas and start-ups in Italy
Rinascimenti Sociali [“Social Renaissances”], the first accelerator of social knowledge and entrepreneurship in Italy, launches Foundamenta, a call exclusively dedicated to new business ideas and start-ups generating social impact…
From Putting People First
Interview with John Thackara: how to thrive in the next economy
On the occasion of the U.S. launch of his new book, How to Thrive in the Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World Today, John Thackara sat down with Core77’s Allan Chochinov to talk about the book, changing attitudes about the…
From Putting People First
Interview with John Thackara: how to thrive in the next economy
On the occasion of the U.S. launch of his new book, How to Thrive in the Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World Today, John Thackara sat down with Core77’s Allan Chochinov to talk about the book, changing attitudes about the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Innovation and Risk in Private Label
My own observation is that there has been considerable innovation in private label. It does make sense that it would be first used for the low hanging fruit of emulating existing product. Thus minimizing risk. With the data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Switching Technology Stacks
In DSC: This often occurs in the modern analysis world, we have to switch among data and methodology stacks, while balancing cognitive load. Which is why automating aspects of this can be very useful." ... Cognitive load is…
From Blog@Ubiquity
Who is Big in Computing – Part 1?
We should never forget the roots of our profession, and humble programmers should remember who made modern computing.
The post Who is Big in Computing – Part 1? appeared first on BLOG@UBIQUITY.
From insideHPC
Amber Molecular Dynamics Optimization on Intel Xeon Phi
"The Amber Molecular Dynamics software is a well known and understood application for the structural dynamics of large biological molecules. With modern computer systems, a speedup in the computations can lead to studying events…
From insideHPC
Slidecast: Mellanox Announces Switch IB2 on the Road to Exascale
"Today Mellanox announced Switch-IB 2, the new generation of its InfiniBand switch optimized for High-Performance Computing, Web 2.0, database and cloud data centers, capable of 100Gb/s per port speeds. Switch-IB 2 is the world's…