Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2020
From insideHPC
Jetstream and XSEDE resources available for pandemic research
As part of the worldwide effort to understand and contain the COVID-19 pandemic, Indiana University’s Jetstream, which offers cloud-based, on-demand computing and data analysis resources within the Extreme Science and Engineering…
From insideHPC
Podcast: ZFP Project looks to Reduce Memory Footprint and Data Movement on Exascale Systems
In this Let's Talk Exascale podcast, Peter Lindstrom from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory describes how the ZFP project will help reduce the memory footrprint and data movement in Exascale systems. “To perfom those computations…
From insideHPC
DOE INCITE program seeks proposals for 2021
The DOE INCITE program has issued its Call for Proposals. "Open to researchers from academia, industry and government agencies, the INCITE program is aimed at large-scale scientific computing projects that require the power and…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing the Expansion of Wind Power
Researchers are using TACC supercomputers to map out a path towards growing wind power as an energy source in the United States. "This research is the first detailed study designed to develop scenarios for how wind energy can…
From insideHPC
Intelligent Video Analytics Pushes Demand for High Performance Computing at the Edge
In this special guest feature, Tim Miller, VP of Product Marketing at One Stop Systems (OSS), writes that his company is addressing the common requirements for video analytic applications with its AI on the Fly® building blocks…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Private Computation of Aggregate Statistics
Better privacy from aggregate statistics (Technical)
Prio: Private, Robust, and Scalable Computation of Aggregate Statistics
By Henry Corrigan-Gibbs and Dan Boneh
Abstract. This paper presents Prio, a privacy-preserving system
To…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apple, Google to Harness Phones for Virus Infection Tracking
Much going around about this now. Just taking a closer look. Can tech harvest the right data to leverage a solution? Privacy pushback? More to follow.
Apple, Google to Harness Phones for Virus Infection Tracking
Associated Press…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Disrupting Operations of Illicit Supply Networks (D-ISN) Solicitation
With input from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking, the National Science Foundation (NSF) recently published a new solicitation on Disrupting Operations of Illicit Supply…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Researchers Respond to COVID-19: Operationalizing AI in Health
“Applying AI in real-world applications requires an understanding of operational realities and human workflows – especially in healthcare applications. My colleagues and I at Johns Hopkins APL are kicking off series of virtual…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Build a Network of Teams
We did this by constructing teams that included specific skills, making sure they could communicate. Also document results and directions.
To weather a crisis, build a network of teams
This dynamic and collaborative team structure…
From insideHPC
TYAN Boosts HPC and Storage Servers with New AMD EPYC 7002 Series Processors
Today TYAN announced support for high frequency AMD EPYC 7F32 (8 cores), EPYC 7F52 (16 cores) and EPYC 7F72 (24 cores) processor-based server motherboards and server systems to the market. TYAN's HPC and storage server platforms…
From insideHPC
Intel and QuTech Demonstrate High-Fidelity ‘Hot’ Qubits for Practical Quantum Systems
Today Intel and QuTech published a paper in Nature demonstrating the successful control of “hot” qubits, the fundamental unit of quantum computing, at temperatures greater than 1 kelvin. "Our demonstration of hot qubits that
…
From insideHPC
Podcast: AI for Science
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the AI for Science program coming out of Argonne National Laboratory. "This is one of the biggest potential changes in our industry and well worth the investigation. But figuring…
From insideHPC
Atos Supercomputer at Hartree Centre powers Coronavirus research
Today Atos announced that a BullSequana X1000 at the STFC Hartree Centre is providing supercomputing power to assist in global computational drug discovery efforts to help combat COVID-19. "By using some of the capability of
…
From insideHPC
Bursting into the public Cloud: Experiences at large scale for IceCube
Igor Sfiligoi from SDSC gave this talk at the ECSS Symposium. "I have recently helped IceCube expand their resource pool by a few orders of magnitude, first to 380 PFLOP32s for a few hours and later to 170 PFLOP32s for a whole…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google AI Making Decisions on the Fly
Intriguing direction making decisions like we often do, in a series to address changes in context
Google’s AI enables robots to make decisions on the fly
By Kyle Wiggers in Venturebeat
In a paper published this week (technical)…
From Computational Complexity
Theoretical Computer Science for the Future
Guest post by the TCS4F initiative
(Antoine Amarilli, Thomas Colcombet, Hugo Férée, Thomas Schwentick)
TCS4F is an initiative by theoretical computer scientists who are
concerned about that other major crisis of our time: climate…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Effect of Privacy Notices
An example of behavioral response to alerting consumers,
The Bulletproof Glass Effect: When Privacy Notices Backfire
by Aaron R. Brough, David A. Norton, and Leslie John in HBSWK
Consumers regularly encounter privacy notices explaining…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Grocery Stores use Robots During Pandemic
No unexpected, certainly many retailers will be investigating and testing the idea.
Grocery Stores Turn to Robots During the Coronavirus
CNN Business
Nathaniel Meyersohn
Local grocers and large supermarket chains are deploying robots…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
John Horton Conway 1937–2020
An appreciation Names for large numbers source John Horton Conway just passed away from complications of COVID-19. We are all saddened by this news, and we hope you all are doing your best to stay safe and help others cope. Today…
From Schneier on Security
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I'm being interviewed on "Hacking in the Public Interest" as part of the Black Hat Webcast Series, on Thursday, April 16, 2020 at 2:00 PM EDT. The list is maintained…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Planning For School in the Fall of 2020
This time of year I always start thinking about the next school year. Even though I don’t expect to be teaching (announced my retirement already) I can’t stop thinking about the fall. Will schools be in their buildings or will…
From insideHPC
NERSC Rolls Out New Community File System for Next-Gen HPC
NERSC recently unveiled their new Community File System (CFS), a long-term data storage tier developed in collaboration with IBM that is optimized for capacity and manageability. The CFS replaces NERSC’s Project File System,
…
From insideHPC
Project BreathEasy using Digital Twins of Lungs to Improve COVID-19 Patient Outcomes
OnScale and LEXMA have partnered to create patient-specific digital twins that may accurately predict oxygen and blood flow in a patient’s lungs, helping doctors make critical decisions about ventilator and intubation requirements…
From BLOG@CACM
Would There Be Computers Without Easter?
Finding roots of computing in the computation of Easter.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC @ AAAS 2020 – Artificial Intelligence Research: A Community Roadmap
In August 2019 the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), released A 20-Year Community Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence Research in the US. The Roadmap…
From insideHPC
New 2nd Gen AMD EPYC Processors Target HPC Workloads
Today AMD added three new processors to its 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor family. Targeted at HPC workloads, the new processors combine the balanced and efficient AMD Infinity architecture with higher speed “Zen 2” cores for optimal…
From insideHPC
Video: Fighting Wildfires with AI and IBM Systems
In this video, Michele Taufer from the University of Tennessee describes how AI enabled by HPC allows researchers to study wildfire propagation which enhances predictions and mitigation. "One of the projects her team is working…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing Ocean Wave Energy
We primarily used our simulation techniques to investigate inertial sea wave energy converters, which are renewable energy devices developed by our collaborators at the Polytechnic University of Turin that convert wave energy…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nuro Autonomous Delivery Vehicle Approved for Test
California Allows…