Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2016
From insideHPC
Video: Exploiting HPC Technologies to Accelerate Big Data Processing
"This talk will present RDMA-based designs using OpenFabrics Verbs and heterogeneous storage architectures to accelerate multiple components of Hadoop (HDFS, MapReduce, RPC, and HBase), Spark and Memcached. An overview of the…
From insideHPC
Learn Apache Hadoop with Spark in One Day
Hadoop and Spark clusters have a reputation for being extremely difficult to configure, install, and tune, but help is on the way. The good folks at Cluster Monkey are hosting a crash course entitled Apache Hadoop with Spark …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Economics in Machine Learning
Makes sense. Both economics and machine learning are driven by pattern detection and re application. " .... Economists have largely preferred to act within their own field and interpretations. However, the rise of big data challenges…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stormy Evolution of Mathematics
A network visualization of the evolution of mathematics. Pretty narrow interest but still an example of how to visualize networks.
From insideHPC
Silicon Mechanics is Intel’s ‘Channel Cares’ Partner of the Year
Today Silicon Mechanics announced that the company was recently named one of the Intel Corporation’s 2015 ISS Partner’s of the Year, specifically with Intel’s Channel Cares program. TheISS Partner of the Year award is given out…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Media Services Getting Smarter
A continuing trend. Intelligence can consist of including higher level services. But these have to be correct and consistent under varying data contexts. That last part is probably the hardest thing to achieve. Contexts can…
From insideHPC
Distinguished Speaker Series Coming to ISC 2016
iscToday ISC 2016 announced that five renowned experts in computational science will participate in their new Distinguished Speaker series. Topics will include exascale computing efforts in the US, the next supercomputers in…
From insideHPC
How Verne Global is Moving HPC Workloads to Iceland
"At Verne Global we combine low power costs, free cooling for 365 days of the year and optimized infrastructure to reduce the total costs of ownership for your data center. Our customers have achieved savings of more than 80%…
From Schneier on Security
IRS Security
Monday is Tax Day. Many of us are thinking about our taxes. Are they too high or too low? What's our money being spent on? Do we have a government worth paying for? I'm not here to answer any of those questions -- I'm here to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Accenture Builds a Virtual Assistant called MyWizard
Continued efforts to build virtual assistants. Named MyWizard. Note the industry specific elements and knowledge. How much local learning? I like the statement of it dealing directly with business outcomes. LookingAccenture…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF CISE Distinguished Lecture- Daniela Rus
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is pleased to announce a distinguished lecture on Wednesday, April 20, 2016 at 2:00pm EDT by Dr. Daniela Rus titled…
From insideHPC
Monitoring Power Consumption with the Intelligent Platform Management Interface
"NWPerf is software that can measure and collect a wide range of performance data about an application or set of applications that run on a cluster. With minimal impact on performance, NWPerf can gather historical information…
From insideHPC
Video: The Internet of Machines
In this video, Steve Hebert from Nimbix presents: The Internet of Machines. "The good folks at Nimbix have also posted full a set video presentations from their recent Developer Summit. The event brought together the best and…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing the Dwarf Dark Galaxy Hidden in ALMA Gravitational Lens Image
Astronomers are using the Blue Waters supercomputer and the ALMA telescope in Chile to investigate the location of a dwarf dark galaxy. Subtle distortions hidden in ALMA’s stunning image of the gravitational lens SDP.81 are telltale…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bots Auto Captioning Photos
An area I worked in both in the enterprise, and with a startup. Google and Facebook have done work in this area. Now Microsoft is also doing such captioning, apparently with some problems. The implications of error have…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Recaps the GPU Technology Conference
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team recaps the GPU Technology Conference, which wrapped up last week in San Jose. Since Rich is traveling around in some desert somewhere, Dan and Henry go it alone and discuss the new Pascal…
From insideHPC
Modernizing Materials Code at OSC’s Intel Parallel Computing Center
A research team at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) is beginning the task of modernizing a computer software package that leverages large-scale, 3-D modeling to research fatigue and fracture analyses, primarily in metals. …
From Phys.org Technology News
How playing video games can change your retirement
The teenagers who were hooked on Pac-Man in the arcades and amusement parks of the early 1970s are getting ready for retirement, but many of them have never stopped playing video games. In fact, it doesn't look like they are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Connecting Analytics to Data
Good thoughts in the Cisco Blog:" ... In every industry data is being created in places it never has before, creating hyper-distributed data environments. It is becoming increasingly hard to reach that data, secure that data,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Doing Data for Startups
From Matt RitterGood thoughts on the topic, have worked with startups in this area, and it is quite different. Free guide and more here at the link. He writes:Everybody is a scientist. Everybody uses data to make decisions.You…
From insideHPC
NSCI Update from the HPC User Forum
In this video from the HPC User Forum in Tucson, Saul Gonzalez Martirena from NSF provides an update on the NSCI initiative. “As a coordinated research, development, and deployment strategy, NSCI will draw on the strengths of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mass Customization
We looked at this a number of ways, in particular how customization could be applied at different stages of manufacturing and delivery. Driven by optimal cost and efficiency. Related, in the HBR: Operations Management The…
From Schneier on Security
Cheating in Marathon Running
Story of Julie Miller, who cheated in multiple triathlon races: The difference between cheating in 1980 and cheating today is that it's much harder to get away with now. What trips up contemporary cheaters, Empfield said, is…
From Computational Complexity
Who Controls Machine Learning?
After AlphaGo's victory, the New York Times ran an article The Race Is On to Control Artificial Intelligence, and Tech’s Future. A platform, in technology, is essentially a piece of software that other companies build on and…
From Putting People First
Anthropology is not only undersold, it’s misunderstood
Dr. John Sherry, Director of Business Innovation Research at Intel, says in an long profile on Epicpeople that anthropology is not only undersold, but also misunderstood: People too often talk about ethnography as a tool for …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mycroft Virtual Assistant Advances to Developers
Mycroft, an always listening virtual assistant:An artificial Intelligence for everyone?Challenging to Amazon Echo, Siri, Cortana ...In Kickstarter development.Their FAQ addresses some of the questions.And Blog.Apr 4, 2016 Saturday…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Council Member Jennifer Rexford Named ACM 2016-2017 Athena Lecturer
Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member Jennifer Rexford has been named the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2016-2017 Athena Lecturer. Each year, the Athena Lecturer award celebrates women researchers who…
From insideHPC
Video: InfiniBand as Core Network in an Exchange Application
"Group Deutsche Boerse is a global financial service organization covering the entire value chain from trading, market data, clearing, settlement to custody. While reliability has been a fundamental requirement for exchanges …
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
It Compiled, It Ran, It Must Be Right. Right?
One of the hardest things about teaching students about programming is getting them to properly test their code. Testing is something I explain regularly and go over from the very beginning of a course. Every course. And yet,…
From insideHPC
One Stop Systems 200TB Flash Storage Array SAN gets Rave Review
Today One Stop Systems announced the results of High-Tech Online Magazine Tom's IT PRO's review of the 200TB Flash Storage Array SAN (FSA-SAN). OSS' FSA-SAN provides 200TB of shared Flash RAIDed memory with a choice of the fastest…