Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2021
From insideHPC
Excelero Achieves Red Hat OpenShift Operator Certification for its NVMesh Software-Defined Storage
SAN JOSE, March 11, 2021 — Excelero, maker of software-defined storage for IO-intensive workloads, such as GPU computing for AI/ML/DL, HPC and fast data analytics, has achieved Red Hat OpenShift Operator Certification for its…
From The Eponymous Pickle
China Moves ahead to Digital Currency
China Charges Ahead with National Digital Currency By The New York Times March 4, 2021
China has charged ahead with a bold effort to remake the way that government-backed money works, rolling out its own digital currency with…From The Eponymous Pickle
Faster Linear Equations
Like the aspect of guessing to solve, implies the useful introduction of randomness.
Algorithm Breaks Speed Limit for Solving Linear Equations
By Quanta Magazine
Grade school math teachers admonish students not to just guessAs…From The Eponymous Pickle
Just Walk Out: Cashierless Shopping
Being tested in a number of Amazon Go Stores. Pushing convenience. In my cook role would love to be able to 'just walk out' with an ingredient item or two. Is it enough to get me to use Amazon Fresh or Amazon Go stores?
Amazon…From insideHPC
SiPearl Say Rhea Exascale Chip Has Entered Accelerated Simulation Phase for 2022 Launch
SiPearl, the company designing the Rhea microprocessor for the European exascale supercomputer, announced it has passed a milestone before the chip’s scheduled 2022 launch. The company said it is moving into an “accelerated simulation…
From insideHPC
Azure GM Joins OCP Board
The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) announced that Microsoft Azure GM Zaid Kahn will hold a seat on its board. Kahn replaces Kushagra Vaid, who has served over the past year. Vaid had been engaged with OCP since 2014 and…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What’s Up with Novice Programmers and Comments
Continuing my look at papers from the SIGCSE 2021conference. The papers are available for free for a limited time. Get them while you can. I take a look at Usage of the Java Language by Novices over Time: Implications for Tool…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Lookout spots Defects and Anomalies in Visuals
Had not heard of this particular AWS service, could have been useful on our industrial manufacturing and supply chain areas. Just as we use our vision to scan for anomalies in representations of systems or data.
Amazon’s Lookout…From The Eponymous Pickle
Soft Robots Turn Rigid on Demand
Intriguing capability that addresses adding rigidity to allow robots to resist movement. Had not thought of this as a useful function.
Helping Soft Robots Turn Rigid on Demand
MIT News, Daniel Ackerman, March 3, 2021
Massachusetts…From insideHPC
Scientific Machine Learning and HPC-AI Technology Convergence
Though AI has been widely demystified, its full materialization in real field implementation entails diversified challenges. The article by Dr Cédric Bourrasset (Atos) gives perspective on the hiccups and recommendations on the…
From insideHPC
Oxford Instruments NanoScience Gains Momentum in Quantum Computing
Oxford Instruments NanoScience is today announcing its latest innovation in Cryofree dilution refrigerator technology for quantum computing scale up, the ProteoxLX, as well as new quantum computing customer collaborations worldwide…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Web As We Know it Ending?
Changing yes, but ending now. We are too dependent on it for too many things. No doubt using it is getting trickier. Need to look closer at risks and Threats.
The Worldwide Web As We Know It May Be Ending By CNN in ACM …From insideHPC
Bridging the Gap between Quantum and Classical Computing
Abstracting away the complexities of using quantum technology is the mission of Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI), a startup in Leesburg, VA. In this interview, Steve Reinhardt, a 20-plus year HPC veteran (Cray and SGI) and now VP…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Talk Tonight: A Thousand Brains: Jeff Hawkins
Late to this, but of interest, talked to Jeff in our early AI exploration days.
Neuroscientist and engineer Jeff Hawkins unveils a new biological theory of intelligence that Richard Dawkins calls "exhilarating.". PresentedKepler's…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Inch by Inch–The Inchworm Problem
I am reading a bunch of papers from the SIGCSE 2021conference. The papers are available for free for a limited time.Get them while you can. I started with Exploring the Inchworm Problem's Ability to Measure Basic CS Skills
The…From insideHPC
Liqid Announces Slurm Workload Manager Integration for HPC Workloads
Liqid, provider of a composable disaggregated infrastructure (CDI) platform, today announced dynamic Slurm Workload Manager integration for its Liqid Matrix Software, delivering a tool for HPC deployments designed to optimize…
From insideHPC
DOE Announces $30M for Quantum Information Science Research
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced it will provide $30 million for Quantum Information Science (QIS) research that helps scientists understand how nature works on an extremely small scale—100…
From insideHPC
Ionir: Combating Data Gravity with Kubernetes Native Storage and Data Management Platform
NEW YORK — March 10, 2021 — ionir today announced expanded availability of its Kubernetes native storage platform. By eliminating complexity in Kubernetes data and storage management, ionir said it empowers customers to achieve…
From insideHPC
WekaIO Awarded 3 Patents, Wins ISO 27001 Certification
CAMPBELL, Calif., March 10, 2021 – WekaIO (Weka), maker of a data platform for artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), life sciences research, enterprise technical computing and high-performance data analytics (HPDA)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intel Works with Johnson Controls and Sensormatic for Digital Transformations in Retail.
We talked with Intel on their Movidius vision sensor systems for related applications. This appears to be a considerable advance and direction.
“By leveraging Intel processors and accelerator cards based on Intel’s purpose-built…From insideHPC
Atos Delivers BullSequana X410 Supercomputer to Swansea University
Swansea, Wales; London, Paris; March 10, 2021 — Atos today announced it has signed a contract with Swansea University to deploy its BullSequana X410 supercomputer, built on the Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPU architecture and Nvidia…
From insideHPC
Tetrate Raises $40 Million for Cloud-Native Application Networking Platform
SAN FRANCISCO — March 10, 2021 — Tetrate has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by Sapphire Ventures. Other new investors, Scale Venture Partners and NTTVC, and existing investors, Dell Technologies Capital, Intel…
From insideHPC
HPE Adds Greenlake Cloud Services, Expands Ecosystem
HPE has announced updates to its GreenLake cloud services and additional partnerships within the Greenlake ecosystem. Updates include: New HPE GreenLake cloud services for bare metal management and scalable, modular, entry point…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Making Algorithms Fair
We don’t need to be good. But let’s try to be fair. —Holly Black FairVis source/personal website Jamie Morgenstern is an assistant professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Previously she…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Making Algorithms Fair
We don’t need to be good. But let’s try to be fair. —Holly Black FairVis source/personal website Jamie Morgenstern is an assistant professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Previously she…
From Universal Acceptance Steering Group
Join the UASG at ICANN70
The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) will be hosting two sessions during ICANN70 Prep Week and ICANN70 Virtual Community Forum, providing updates on UA readiness and remediation efforts. In order to attend either session…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Logistics: Autonomous High Speed Transporting
New Efforts in the future of logistics:
An Autonomous High-Speed Transporter for Tomorrow's Logistics By Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Germany) March 9, 2021
Able to sort large quantities of packages, this high-speed transporter can…From Schneier on Security
More on the Chinese Zero-Day Microsoft Exchange Hack
Nick Weaver has an excellent post on the Microsoft Exchange hack:
The investigative journalist Brian Krebs has produced a handy timeline of events and a few things stand out from the chronology. The attacker was first detected…From Schneier on Security
On the Insecurity of ES&S Voting Machines’ Hash Code
Andrew Appel and Susan Greenhalgh have a blog post on the insecurity of ES&S’s software authentication system:
It turns out that ES&S has bugs in their hash-code checker: if the “reference hashcode” is completely missing, then…From Schneier on Security
Security Analysis of Apple’s “Find My…” Protocol
Interesting research: “Who Can Find My Devices? Security and Privacy of Apple’s Crowd-Sourced Bluetooth Location Tracking System“:
Abstract: Overnight, Apple has turned its hundreds-of-million-device ecosystem into the world’s…